Cell Block Five

Being plucked from a Baghdad café and deposited in a cell block for political prisoners is a wakeup call for Aziz, the novel’s hero and narrator, who was never charged with any offence. He is befriended by a group of imprisoned revolutionaries who teach Aziz to dream that an ideal city with his name on it may lie just over the horizon, whilst the police supervisor encourages him to think of a simple crime to which he can confess so he can be charged and eventually released. Based on the author’s own incarceration in Iraq, Cell Block Five is a clear-headed, good-humored tribute to the prison’s men - both the inmates and the guards—and an indictment of man’s gratuitous inhumanity to man, pointing out that the transition from abused to abuser, tortured to torturer, can be an easy one. Written in 1971 and published outside Iraq in 1972, Cell Block Five - the first Iraqi prison novel - was later made into a feature film in Syria. Drawing the reader subtly into the political section of an Iraqi prison, this compelling story easily transcends cultural boundaries.