NRI journalist wins award for book on post-war Iraq

LONDON: A book on postwar Iraq revealing an account of daily life inside the protected Green Zone in Baghdad by NRI journalist Rajiv Chandrasekharan has won Britain's top prize for non-fiction, the 30,000 pounds BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize.

The book 'Imperial Life in the Emerald City' by Chandrasekharan, former Baghdad bureau chief of the Washington Post, laid bare the cocooned life led by Americans inside the zone while, outside, Iraqis struggled in the chaos.

It paints a picture of waste, incompetence and thwarted intentions within the Coalition Provisional Authority appointed to run US-occupied Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The book also identified scores of absurdities, such as the American aide who based Baghdad's new traffic laws on those of the state of Maryland.

Baroness Helena Kennedy, Human rights lawyer and chairman of the judges, said last night: "The writing is cool, exact and never overstated and in many places very humorous as the jaw-dropping idiocy of the American action is revealed."

She said the book was "up there with the greatest reportage of the last 50 years".

Named in honour of the 18th century essayist and lexicographer, the Samuel Johnson Prize is open to English-language books in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

Chandrasekaran's book beat five other short-listed titles: Ian Buruma's "Murder in Amsterdam," about the death of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh: "Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties," by Peter Hennessy; Georgina Howell's "Daughter in the Desert," a portrait of archaeologist, explorer and spy Gertrude Bell; Dominic Streatfield's history of mind control, "Brainwash", and "The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War and Madness in Seventeenth Century England," by Adrian Tinniswood.

Last year's winner was James Shapiro's "1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare."

According to the book, more than 1.6 billion dollars (800 million pounds) of Iraq's oil revenue was paid to the US vice-president Dick Cheney's old firm Halliburton; that the Baghdad stock exchange was put in the hands of a 24-year-old who had never worked in finance; and that the Iraqi capital's ne w traffic regulations were based on the laws of the state of Maryland, down-loaded from the internet.

These are among hundreds of allegations based on interviews, documents and case studies which led the judges to salute Chandrasekaran's book at an awards ceremony in London.

The runner-up for the award-- which is never officially revealed-- is thought to have been Daughter of the Desert, which also has an Iraqi connection. It is a biography of the archaeologist, spy, Arab linguist, mountaineer and poet Gertrude Bell, who helped king Faisal draw the borders of the fledgling state of Iraq.