Pulitzer winner to discuss book

Pulitzer winner to discuss book

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Shadid will discuss his most recent book, “Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War,” at Rice’s Howard Keck Hall at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7.

“Baghdad is a city of lives interrupted, its history a story of loss, waiting and resilience,” writes Shadid, a Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post who won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His book begins with the period leading up to the American invasion of Iraq and closes with an epilogue about the 2005 elections. Shadid, who is Lebanese-American and fluent in Arabic, shares the perspectives of people on the Iraqi streets outside the Green Zone, including educated professionals, Iraqi policemen and everyday citizens who have endured blackouts, explosions and other aspects of war for three decades.

Reviewer Tom Nissley wrote, “It’s a despairing but eye-opening account, told with an understanding of the Iraqi people — hospitable, proud and often desperate — that, were it more common, might have led to a different outcome than the one he describes.”

The free lecture, titled “Iraq’s Tragedy,” is open to the public and is sponsored by the Department of History, the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.