Our Man in Iraq
SynopsisPlot
2003: As Croatia lurches from socialism into globalized capitalism, Toni, a cocky journalist in Zagreb, struggles to balance his fragile career, pushy family, and hotheaded girlfriend. But in a moment of vulnerability he makes a mistake: volunteering his unhinged Arabic–speaking cousin Boris to report on the Iraq War. Boris begins filing Gonzo missives from the conflict zone and Toni decides it is better to secretly rewrite his cousin’s increasingly incoherent ramblings than face up to the truth. But when Boris goes missing, Toni’s own sense of reality—and reliability—begins to unravel.
Story
About this book
Set in 2003, Our Man in Iraq follows Toni, a journalist working in Zagreb during a period when Croatia is shifting rapidly from its socialist past toward globalized capitalism. Toni juggles a precarious career, a demanding family, and a volatile girlfriend. In a rash moment, he suggests that his cousin Boris, an unpredictable Arabic speaker, travel to Iraq as a war correspondent. Boris accepts and begins sending dispatches from the conflict zone, but his reports grow stranger and harder to use.
Rather than confronting the situation honestly, Toni starts rewriting Boris's chaotic dispatches in secret, presenting them to his editors as credible journalism. The arrangement holds together until Boris disappears, and Toni finds that his own grip on what is real and what he has fabricated is slipping. The novel traces how personal dishonesty and larger political upheaval feed into each other, with Toni's small deceptions mirroring the bigger fictions circulating in media and politics around him.
Robert Perisic is a Croatian writer, and Our Man in Iraq was the first of his novels to appear in English translation. The story is rooted in Zagreb but extends outward through the Iraq War, connecting two very different countries caught up in periods of rapid, disorienting change.
