The Baghdad Blog

In September 2002 a 29-year-old Iraqi man living in Baghdad began publishing a diary on the internet. He adopted the name Salam Pax and wrote in complete secrecy. He was taking a terrible risk in writing freely about the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. As war approached, millions around the world found their way to Salam's daily weblog to read his funny and frightening reports of life in a city crippled by fear and slipping into chaos. Then the bombs began to fall...

There’s something quite remarkable about the experience of reading Salam Pax, especially for those who read him during the war. Here is an unedited voice from another culture, writing in a way that instantly reminds us how much alike we are, across different cultures and continents. The Baghdad Blog was published simultaneously in Australia by Text Publishing, in the UK by Atlantic Books and in the USA by Grove/Atlantic.

Praise for The Baghdad Blog:

'The most vivid account of the Iraq conflict.'

Guardian

‘The most famous and most mysterious blogger in the world…Salam Pax was the Anne Frank of the war…and its Elvis.’

Peter Maass, Slate

‘In turns crass and subtle, provincial and worldly, the diary of Salam Pax has become the voice of an Internet generation alienated from nations and tribes but connected to one another in the most intimate digital ways.’

Los Angeles Times

‘Salam Pax not only highlighted the deficiencies of embedded media, [his] blog became required reading for anyone needing to find out what was really happening on the ground during the US-led invasion.’

Globe and Mail (Canada)