KANAN MAKIYA, who began writing as Samir al-Khalil, was born in Baghdad of an Iraqi father and an English mother. He studied architecture at M.I.T. in the United States, lacer joining his father Muhammad Makiya to design and build many major projects in the Middle East and Europe. In 1981, he began to write a book about Iraq, a book that became not only a portrait of Ba'thist terror but also a personal reflection on Arab identity, nationalism and power and on the nature of revolutionary politics. Republic of Fear was published in 1989 and was largely ignored by Western and non-lraqi intellectuals until Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. Since August 1990 it has sold over 150,000 copies worldwide.

Makiya's book, The Monument, published in 1991, is an essay on the aestheties of power and kitsch, and is centred on the enormous Victory Arch erected by Saddam after the war between Iran and Iraq.

Along with these books, written as Samir al- Khalil, Makiya has written for The lndependent, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books and The Times. ln October 1992, he acted as the convenor of the Human Rights Committee of the Iraqi National Congress. He has collaborated on two films for television, the most recent of which exposed for the first time the 1988 campaign of mass murder in northern Iraq known as the Anfal. Makiya has also been the subject of an extensive profile in The New Yorker.

Jacket illustration: Steve Martin
Author's photograph: Paula Hajar