A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal

The New Yorker

Seierstad, a Norwegian who earned her stripes as a correspondent in Grozny and Kabul, went to Iraq two months before the bombs came. Her memoir touches all the familiar topics of prewar Iraq reporting: Baghdad’s poverty; the ubiquity of Saddam icons; Iraqis’ reluctance to confide their dislike of his regime; and, most prominently, the regime’s stifling control over visiting reporters. Her hundred and one days in Baghdad, however, come to an end even before the premature declaration that combat is over, and she can only hint at the intractable conflict that has engulfed Iraq in the two years since then. These dispatches, described as “snapshots,” are human-interest pieces, focussing on the anxieties of ordinary Iraqis rather than on the geopolitical upheaval outside her hotel window. Seierstad’s depictions of quotidian suffering are affecting, if sometimes saccharine, as the tyranny of Saddam gives way to the lawless chaos of the American invasion.

Publishers Weekly

The author of The Bookseller of Kabul, Norwegian journalist Seierstad spent 101 days in Baghdad before, during and after the initial coalition attacks in March 2003. She calls the articles she sent back to Europe glimpses from the war, and weaves them into a brisk, present-tense narrative. The initial battles are with her official minders, always eager to steer her to sanctioned sites. With child psychologists, she sneaks out to explore the muddled terror and fantasy in Iraqi kids. A Finnish human shield professes no opinion of Saddam. A missile that hit a market renders scenes of blood and torment too gruesome to publish. Every American soldier the author meets mentions 9/11, but there is no one Iraqi voice she finds men joyful and resentful as they watch the fall of Saddam's statue, and finally able to report atrocities they witnessed. One constant is Aliya, Seierstad's interpreter, a loyal regime supporter who heroically shows up during the attacks, works mechanically after liberation to translate regime opponents' words and finally comes to some understanding of her country's past. While more ambitious narratives may provide more context, this is a valuable impressionistic portrait; it may lack the concentrated intimacy of The Bookseller of Kabul, but should backlist well as part of the tapestry of Iraq coverage. Agent, Diane Spivey. 7-city author tour. (Apr. 11) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The author is a talented and courageous Norwegian journalist whose prior work, The Bookseller of Kabul, set a high standard for description of the extraordinary and brutal lives of people in war. Baghdad now offers subjects no less dramatic than Kabul, perhaps more gripping since the period Seierstad covers conjoins the impact of Saddam Hussein's monstrous cruelty with the war and chaos of the early occupation. No less valuable is the author's willingness to include reference to her own frustration with Iraqi censorship and the "buzz of rumors, lies and half-truths" that encumbers serious reporting on Iraq. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Seierstad writes about her stay as a reporter for Scandinavian, Dutch, and German media in Baghdad in the days before the war in Iraq through the fall of Baghdad. She describes her day-to-day efforts to try to report on the lives and thoughts of the people of Iraq while handicapped by the corrupt and powerful press-center employees, and constantly chaperoned by an interpreter and minder with whom she will have to "fawn, lie, and conceal." By being patient and skillful, she wades through the endless Bath party propaganda and reaches into the hearts and souls of the people: the 11-year-old who dreams about bombs falling on her family, the disgruntled restaurant worker who tells her that the walls have ears, and the people who try to care for their loved ones hurt in the bombing. She fearfully hunkers down in her hotel as the bombs fall, but then bravely slips out to watch a soccer game played in defiance of the bombing, to listen to press conferences announcing the successful exploits of the Iraqi army, and to watch the mayhem in the streets in the aftermath of the attacks. Seierstad puts a human face to and provides insight into the mosaic of the people of Iraq, the Bath party supporters, the dissidents, and the average person caught in the nightmare of the Saddam regime and the horrors of war.-Jane S. Drabkin, Chinn Park Regional Library, Woodbridge, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A riveting and wrenching account of a Norwegian journalist's experiences in Baghdad before, during and after the American invasion of Iraq. Seierstad (The Bookseller of Kabul, 2003) establishes a principle that dominates this powerful work: "The truth about the war in Iraq does not exist." Everyone lies. The Iraqi bureaucrats lie as the Americans prepare and launch their attacks; the Iraqi media broadcast and print stories that are patently false; the Americans lie about their objectives in the country. (The author reports many American soldiers saying the invasion is payback for 9/11.) Seierstad begins with her difficulties in Baghdad before the regime fell. She didn't speak the language; couldn't go anywhere without a "minder"; and repeatedly struggled to convince officials to let her remain. (Once, she was evicted but soon found her way back from Jordan.) But then she discovered a wonderful translator and guide, Aliya, who stayed with her until she left the country after the fall of Baghdad. When order disintegrated as the Americans approached, the author was able to get the stories she craved through interviews with ordinary Iraqis and visits to sites of damage and destruction-hospitals, marketplaces, schools-writing descriptions of what she saw that can require of the reader a steady eye and a calm stomach. Seierstad reproduces here, within the context of her narrative, a number of the actual stories she filed. Horrors were everywhere. American soldiers, she claims, targeted journalists and, unable to distinguish friend from foe, shot numerous civilians whose only offense was to fail to understand English. In Saddam City, later, she heard harrowing tales of families that had beendecimated by the dictator's brutality. Looters now ran wild while Americans guarded the Oil Ministry. Dispatches scorched by the flames of battle and delivered by Seierstad, to enormous effect, in tense, crisp language. Author tour