I've never read a book translated from Arabic before, and this was a really great one to start with. I loved the new take on a classic story, the way it was changed and added to and modified to include aspects from Iraqi culture and critiques of political/cultural/military atmosphere. I work at a bookstore and happened to pick this book up to re-shelve it and ended up buying it instead. I'm really glad I did because this was a very cool way to use a well-known narrative to expose problems of war and conflict like corruption and innocent deaths (and who is more/less innocent than others). I loved the narrative style, the way it jumped through multiple perspectives and then suddenly included The Writer at the end. The novel's imagery was also so cinematic, many of the scenes I could see in my head as shots from a dark film. I'm really glad I accidentally picked this book up, because it's one of my favorites I've read this year.