In the tradition of In Cold Blood and The Executionerâs Song, this haunting, insightful, and surprisingly intimate portrait of Saddam Hussein provides âa brief, but powerful, meditation on the meaning of evil and powerâ (USA TODAY).
The âcaptivatingâ (Military Times) The Prisoner in His Palace invites us to take a journey with twelve young American soldiers in the summer of 2006. Shortly after being deployed to Iraq, they learn their assignment: guarding Saddam Hussein in the months before his execution.
Living alongside, and caring for, their âhigh value detainee and regularly transporting him to his raucous trial, many of the men begin questioning some of their most basic assumptionsâabout the judicial process, Saddamâs character, and the morality of modern war. Although the young soldiersâ increasingly intimate conversations with the once-feared dictator never lead them to doubt his responsibility for unspeakable crimes, the men do discover surprising new layers to his psyche that run counter to the mediaâs portrayal of him.
Woven from firsthand accounts provided by many of the American guards, government officials, interrogators, scholars, spies, lawyers, family members, and victims, The Prisoner in His Palace shows two Saddams coexisting in one person: the defiant tyrant who uses torture and murder as tools, and a shrewd but contemplative prisoner who exhibits surprising affection, dignity, and courage in the face of looming death.
In this thought-provoking narrative, Saddam, known as the âman without a conscience,â gets many of those around him to examine theirs. âA singular study exhibiting both military duty and human compassionâ (Kirkus Reviews), The Prisoner in His Palace grants us âa behind-the-scenes look at history thatâs nearly impossible to put downâŠa mesmerizing glimpse into the final moments of a brutal tyrantâs lifeâ (BookPage).