RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksThe absurdity of justice, rife throughout the novel, is one of Saadawi’s most powerful critiques ... Saadawi masterfully demonstrates that US attempts to establish the rule of law in Iraq did not fall short for any Orientalist \'clash of civilizations\' reasons. Instead, he portrays US forces as indirectly criminal ... Saadawi...depict[s] Baghdad as a space where the absurd is not a function of Islam or the \'backward\' Arab mind but rather the product of the United States’s imperialist encroachment.
