Nabeel's Song

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'Nabeel's Song' is the written memoir of the respected Iraqi poet Nabeel Yasin and his extended family. Written by UK journalist Jo Tatchell this book details the poet's extraordinarily eventful life in Iraq through the 50s, 60s and 70s during the rise of Ba'athism and the emergence of Saddam Hussein as the party figurehead. It also chronicles life in exile and the transition of Iraq itself from a relatively open and modern society into one of repression, dictatorship and violence under the militaristic ba'athist regime. However, the book is thankfully free of political rhetoric, the narrative is strong and unrelenting and its varied and rich cast of characters paint a picture of how ordinary families survived under an often violent and destructive dictatorship.

In 1978 Yasin was added to Saddam Hussein's infamous cultural blacklist for his dogged refusal to write poetry for the regime. Following a surreal interogation by Tariq Aziz he joined other illustrious company from Satre, Woolfe, Dostoyevsky to Shakespeare and Tin Tin in being literature that would result in a lengthy prison term in one of the 'slum' prisons or worse if you were caught with it. In 1979, following a year of beatings, running from one safe house to another pursued by the secret police and a bizarre assassination attempt Yasin, his young wife and child, fled into exile. They did not return to Iraq and had no conatct prior to liberation in 2003 save for one anxious 5 minute phone call. The book, without ever resorting to oversentimentality gives a very honest representation of what an itinerant family in exile must endure estranged from family, friends and their own culture.

The book is also the story of Yasin's poetry and the of the power of literary resistance. Poetry (sung or intoned rather than recited- hence the book's title) is the pre-eminent cultural form in Iraq. Yasin's writing was considered revolutionary in that it fused a modern poetic approach ( particularly the use of abstract imagery) with traditional Iraqi historical form. His most noted works are Brother Yasin ( written in 1974) and the epic Mesopotamia which propelled him to literary stardom and made him one of the most loved young poets in Iraq during the mid 1970s. He was dubbed the Iraqi Bob Dylan at this time for his outspoken stance on freedom of speech, political hypocrisy and the fact that he seeme to have the ear of the young. It was the poem Brothers Yasin Again written in exile in London and published in a limited edition of just 500 that proved to be the most extraordinary of all his poems. It is believed that a single copy of this poem was smuggled back into Iraq overland during the early 1990s, was distributed through the literary underground, ( who risked their own lives to distribute and copy western literature) and became a rallying cry for those who were in opposition to Saddam's rule. The poem was often recited by rote as an act of defiance and it was journalist Jo Tatchell's piece on the poem's extraordinary journey back to Iraq that prompted the writing of the book.

Nabeel's Song was nominated for the Samual Johnson Prize in 2007 and shortlisted for the Costa ( formerly the Whitbread) prize in 2006 and the Index on Censorship Awards the same year.

It is Jo Tatchell's first book and was published in the UK in 2006.