The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards Of A Year In Iraq - Softcover

"Important and instructive . . . [Stewart] lays bare the complexity of America’s and Britain’s mission in Iraq."?The Washington Post Book World

In August 2003, at the age of thirty, Rory Stewart took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad. A Farsi-speaking British diplomat, he was soon appointed deputy governor of Amarah and then Nasiriyah, provinces in the remote, impoverished marsh regions of southern Iraq. He spent the next eleven months negotiating hostage releases, holding elections, and splicing together some semblance of an infrastructure for a population of millions teetering on the brink of civil war.
 
The Prince of the Marshes tells the story of Stewart’s year. By turns funny and harrowing, moving and incisive, this book amounts to a unique portrait of heroism and the tragedy that intervention inevitably courts in the modern age.

"Rueful, richly detailed, often harrowing . . . [Stewart] brings his yearlong diary to a conclusion with a thrilling shoot ’em-up, an Alamo-like last stand in Nasiriya."?The New York Times

"Rory Stewart can write . . . His spare, vivid prose serves him brilliantly . . . There’s sometimes something Monty Pythonesque about the way he sails gallantly, if not quite blindly, into danger."?The Seattle Times

RORY STEWART is the author of the national bestseller The Places in Between. A former infantry officer, diplomat in Indonesia and Yugoslavia, and Fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire by the British government for his services in Iraq. He now lives in Kabul.

In August 2003, at the age of thirty, Rory Stewart took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad. A Farsi-speaking British diplomat who had recently completed an epic walk from Turkey to Bangladesh, he was soon appointed deputy governor of Amarah and then Nasiriyah, provinces in the remote, impoverished marsh regions of southern Iraq. He spent the next eleven months negotiating hostage releases, holding elections, and splicing together some semblance of an infrastructure for a population of millions teetering on the brink of civil war.

The Prince of the Marshes tells the story of Stewart’s year. As a participant he takes us inside the occupation and beyond the Green Zone, introducing us to a colorful cast of Iraqis and revealing the complexity and fragility of a society we struggle to understand. By turns funny and harrowing, moving and incisive, it amounts to a unique portrait of heroism and the tragedy that intervention inevitably courts in the modern age.