Being plucked from a Baghdad cafe and deposited in a cell block for political prisoners is a wakeup call for Aziz, the novel's hero and narrator, a young man who has been living on automatic pilot - as if he were a guest visiting his own life - and he is finally forced to come to terms with the flawed world we inhabit and shape. Based on the author's own incarceration in Iraq, "Cell Block Five" is a clear-headed, good-humoured tribute to the prison's men - both the inmates and the guards - and an indictment of man's gratuitous inhumanity to man, pointing out that the transition from abused to abuser, tortured to torturer, can be an easy one. Written in 1971 and published outside Iraq in 1972, "Cell Block Five" - the first Iraqi prison novel - was later made into a feature film in Syria. Drawing the reader subtly into the political section of an Iraqi prison, this compelling story easily transcends cultural boundaries.

Translated by: William M. Hutchins