In the zone ... Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, winner of the 2007 Samuel Johnson prize for Imperial Life in the Emerald City, talks to Lindesay Irvine about his tragicomic account of life in post-war Iraq, in the running for this year's Guardian First Book award.
He explains how, after working as Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, he was inspired to write the black tale of the ill-planned and misconceived efforts by the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority to reconstruct the country, and the strange world of the "Emerald City" - the Green Zone.
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