Скачать или смотреть Al-Fitna by Kanan Makiya | Iraq’s Original Sin & the Politics of Betrayal | The Nook Book ReviewEp18

In Episode 18 of The Nook Book Review, Ghena El Hariri reviews Al-Fitna (The Sedition) by Iraqi writer and political thinker Kanan Makiya — a novel that reads less like fiction and more like a classified document.
Al-Fitna begins with the final hours of Saddam Hussein but quickly reveals its true subject: the moral collapse of post-2003 Iraq. Through a young soldier guarding Saddam before his execution, Makiya exposes betrayal, sectarian violence, and the political crimes that followed the fall of the Ba’ath regime.
At the center of the book lies the assassination of Sayyid Abdul Majid al-Khoei inside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf — a killing Makiya presents as the original sin upon which the new Iraq was built. The novel confronts intra-Shia power struggles, the rise of militias, rewritten histories, and the uncomfortable truth of who benefited from Saddam’s fall.
This episode explores:
Why Al-Fitna is one of the most controversial Iraqi novels written after 2003
The political and sectarian tensions between Najaf’s religious dynasties
The moral failure of Iraq’s post-Saddam leadership
Kanan Makiya’s rare and devastating public confession
Al-Fitna is not a comforting read. It is a reckoning.