Justin Marozzi
Eastern Promise
Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of my Iraqi Family
By Tamara Chalabi
HarperPress 414pp £25 order from our bookshop
When God Made Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq 1914–1921
By Charles Townshend
Faber & Faber 591pp £25 order from our bookshop
When the name Chalabi crops up in any discussion of Iraq, chances are that the person speaking is referring to Ahmed Chalabi, the brilliant, cynical, shameless politician whose steady drip-feed of misinformation about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction was music to neo-con ears in Washington. As leader of the US-funded Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of Iraqi exiles dedicated to Saddam’s overthrow, he encouraged America to plunge into its bloody misadventure in Iraq.
Thankfully for the writer of this charming memoir, there is no reason why the sins of the father should be visited upon the daughter. Very sensibly, Tamara Chalabi is quick to nip this one in the bud. ‘Everyone asks me about my father. He has been labelled a
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