At once a terrifying insight into the "crack-cocaine of fanatical fundamentalism" and a blackly humorous narrative of a foreign correspondent"s growing sense of bafflement and alienation Hider"s voice is incisive and rich in the human detail that only first-hand experience bestows. An essential work for anyone wishing to understand the swirling machinations of Iraq, its people and its war James Hider offers a new voice in the literature of the Middle East: His is delightfully fresh and very funny. It takes a brave and confident writer to take on so many taboos but Hider does it with the confidence that comes from years in the field and from a deep, authoritative historical and cultural knowledge of Israel, Iraq and the region This sort of informed but subjective account of the frontlines of conflict in the Middle East is not simply rubbernecking, it"s required reading Time Out.