Mahmoud Saeed

Mahmoud Saeed (born 1939) is an Iraqi-born American novelist.

Born in Mosul, Saeed has written more than twenty novels and short story collections, and hundreds of articles.

He started writing short stories at an early age.

He wrote an award-winning short story in the Newspaper "Fata Al-Iraq, Newspaper" in 1956.

He published a collection of short stories, Port Saeed and other stories, in 1957.

In 1963, the government after 1963 coup destroyed his two novel manuscripts one under review, "The Old Case" and "The Strike".

Authorities banned the publication of any book written by the author from 1963 to 2008.

His most important novels after Ben Barka Lane are The Girls of Jacob, The World Through the Angel's Eyes, I am the One Who Saw, and Trilogy of Chicago.

Saeed currently is the first writer-in-residence at the American University of Iraq at Sulaimani, where he teaches calligraphy.

He previously taught intermediate and advanced Arabic language courses at DePaul University, as well as Arab Culture and Iraqi Political history.

Government censorship prevented his novel Rhythm and Obsession from being published in 1968, and banned his novel Rue Ben Barka, in 1970.

Saddam City depicts the fear and despair of Baghdad schoolteacher Mustafa Ali Noman as he is shuttled from one prison to another after being detained by Iraqi security forces during the heights of Saddam Hussein's rule in the 1970s.

The senselessness of his arrest and the torture he and other prisoners endure drive Mustafa to see Hussein's Iraq as a place where "being free only meant one thing: imminent arrest."

The novel is based on the true experience of Saeed's experiences as a political prisoner in Iraq.

The book has been received well by critics, one of which called Saeed's novel "... bracingly convincing ... a simply beautiful, though inevitably harrowing, tale."

Amazon.com also wrote that "Mahmoud Saeed's devastating novel evokes the works of Kafka, Solzhenitsyn and Elie Wiesel. It is a vivid account of the wanton and brutal treatment of the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussein's feared secret police and of the arbitrariness of life under tyranny."

The novel has applauded for highlighting positive aspects of Arab and Iraqi culture, including friendship, community, respect, generosity, and hospitality.

Saddam City was also considered one of the best 56 novels in the world by the website Library Thing.

According to the author, the original transcript of the novel included two additional chapters.

These, however were censored from the novel by the Arab literature guild in Damascus, Syria.

Because of this, he instead initially published it in a pen name, Mustafa Ali Nooman in 1981.

Rue Ben Barka was published fifteen years later in Egypt 1985, Jordan 1992/1993, and Beirut in 1997.

Saddam City, published in 2004 by Dar Al-Saqi in London, is Saeed's most famous novel.

The title was changed from the original Arabic title, I am the One Who Saw (أنا الذي رأى) (ISBN 9780863563508), and was translated into English by Lake Forest College sociology professor Ahmad Sadri.

The book was later translated and published in Italian with the same title.

The book was republished in Cairo, Egypt under his real name in 2006.

He wrote hundreds of articles and short stories in magazines and Newspapers the following: Al-Adab.

Beirut.

Life.

London.

Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

London.

Azzaman.

London.

Al-Khalige.

Sharjah.

Al-Ithad.

Abu Dhabi.

Lotus.

Tunisia.