num_pages: 396
description: In August 2003, at the age of thirty, Rory Stewart took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad. A Farsi-speaking British diplomat who had recently completed an epic walk from Turkey to Bangladesh, he was soon appointed deputy governor of Amarah and then Nasiriyah, provinces in the remote, impoverished marsh regions of southern Iraq. He spent the next eleven months negotiating hostage releases, holding elections, and splicing together some semblance of an infrastructure for a population of millions teetering on the brink of civil war.The Prince of the Marshes tells the story of Stewart's year. As a participant he takes us inside the occupation and beyond the Green Zone, introducing us to a colorful cast of Iraqis and revealing the complexity and fragility of a society we struggle to understand. By turns funny and harrowing, moving and incisive, it amounts to a unique portrait of heroism and the tragedy that intervention inevitably courts in the modern age.
language: English
title: The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq
titlecomplete: The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq
genres: Asia, Politics, Biography, Travel, Military Fiction, War, Nonfiction, Autobiography, History, Memoir
ratings_count: 2332
awards: awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Orwell Prize, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Dayton Literary Peace Prize
category: Nonfiction
publisher: Harcourt