Our Man in Iraq

A journalist, whose marriage is at the point of collapse, sends his cousin out to report on the war in Iraq in his absence. It's not long before things begin to unravel. While he struggles to hold on to his actress girlfriend, his cousin goes missing. Marriage, job and family are all at stake in Our Man In Iraq this comic take on the conflict in Iraq, told from the Balkans, where politics, nepotism and journalism seem inextricably linked. ''In general terms, there are only a few tests of a good book. The first and really big one, however, is whether you want to know what happens next. The second, which obviously does not apply if you are reading science fiction or a historical romance, say, is whether you think, "Yes, exactly!" about descriptions of people and places. I am not Croatian, but I am a journalist and I know lots of the people in this book - not literally, of course, but I recognise their characters. All the way through, not only did want to know what happened next, but I kept thinking, "Yes, exactly!"' -- Tim Judah, Balkans correspondent for The Economist