{"product_id":"attempts-on-death","title":"Attempts On Death","description":"\u003cp\u003eBaghdad 2003. The city is in flames, caught between a violent dictatorship and an illegal invasion. For the US it is ‘mission accomplished’. For Iraqis it is the beginning of a nightmare apocalypse in which over half a million people will die. Meanwhile the world’s cameras ‘stuff themselves with dust and human flesh.’\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAttempts on Death \u003c\/i\u003eis an attempt by the Iraqi poet and diplomat Chawki Abdelamir to understand the historic destruction of his country and the breaking of its millennia-old past into fragments. It’s a book about oil and sand, soldiers and civilians, heroes and martyrs, the innocent and the dead. Drawing on Sumerian mythology, Islamic history, Arab poetry and the everyday horror of twenty-first century warfare, Chawki tries to explain how Mesopotamia – the legendary paradise of palm-trees and vineyards, and the birthplace of human civilisation –is reduced to a delirious hell ‘where the dead are dying of thirst and the living of madness’. Grim, despairing and desperate,\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eAttempts on Death \u003c\/i\u003eis also a rich, sensual and ultimately optimistic book. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57315410248062,"sku":"NW9781916312159","price":10.95,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9781916312159.jpg?v=1778715985","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/en-eu\/products\/attempts-on-death","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}