Mahmoud Saeed's devastating autobiographical novel will remind the reader of Wiesel's Night, Kafka's The Castle and Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Closely based on the life of the author, it is a vivid account of the wanton and brutal treatment of the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussein's feared secret police. A family man is arrested for no reason that he can discern. Incarcerated in several different prisons throughout the length and breadth of Iraq, alienated from his family and fearful of the dysentery that can afflict him at any time, he witnesses innumerable scenes of torture. He comes to realise the hopelessness of his situation as - in the eyes of his tormentors - the question of innocence or guilt is irrelevant. In the wake of the fall of Saddam's Iraq, and in anticipation of the difficult years of reconstruction ahead, it is critical to remember its polar night under the dictator's boot and the depths of depravity to which agents of tyranny can sink. As a record of one of the darkest periods in the history of the Middle East, this short novel is indispensable.