Goldfarb, Michael

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Office—WBUR-FM, 890 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215.

CAREER: National Public Radio, 1991–, foreign correspondent, London bureau chief, U.S. correspondent.

AWARDS, HONORS: Sony Award for best writing for radio, for the National Public Radio series Homeward Bound.

WRITINGS:

Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2005.

Also author of series Homeward Bound, National Public Radio.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael Goldfarb is an award-winning journalist who has covered the world for National Public Radio. In 2003 he wrote about the invasion of Iraq with the help of his translator friend, Ahmad Shawkat, who also took the journalist to places seldom seen by other reporters. Shawkat was a secular liberal, an Arabic-speaking Kurd who fought in the Iran-Iraq war, and a scholar who had lectured at the University of Mosul. After abandoning his faith in nationalism he was repeatedly tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime. However, after its fall, and with the help of an American grant, Shawkat established an institute that promoted democracy, as well as a newspaper for which he became the editor. It was while leaving the office that he was gunned down by either radical Islamists or former Ba'athists who wanted to silence his support of democracy. Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq is Goldfarb's tribute to his fallen friend.

Both men had supported the war that removed the dictator, but as an Economist contributor noted, Goldfarb "is unsparing in his criticism of the botched peace and America's failure to prevent a slide into violence and sectarianism." Goldfarb writes that the U.S. occupation government "seemed hell-bent on making sure the Iraq that Ahmad envisioned would never exist." A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that "for that, Goldfarb blames the Bush administration, closing with a reasoned but white-hot denunciation of American imperialism. [Goldfarb's book is one] … of the best of the many books to emerge from the Iraq invasion." A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that "Shawkat emerges as a tragic figure, a voice of individual conscience in a country still ruled by rigid ideology and tribal loyalties."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July, 2005, Jay Freeman, review of Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq, p. 1893.

Economist, October 1, 2005, "The Step from Hope to Death: Iraq's War," review of Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace, p. 78.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2005, review of Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace, p. 622.

Library Journal, July 1, 2005, Zachary T. Irwin, review of Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace, p. 101.

Publishers Weekly, June 6, 2005, review of Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace, p. 52.