The American Age, Iraq

Anthony Shadid

Aug 2012 · Granta

About this ebook

Before his death while on assignment in 2012, Anthony Shadid visited Iraq’s all-but-defunct Baghdad College, an American institute that aimed to provide young Iraqis with both knowledge and a sense of acceptance. Spending time with ex-students and their retired Jesuit teachers, Shadid portrayed a time when America was known in the Arab world not for military action but for cultural education – a time now marred by years of conflict. This essay, ‘The American Age, Iraq’, by the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, which first appeared in Granta 116: Ten Years Later, is now published as individual e-book, accompanied by an interview with Shadid which first appeared on granta.com, to celebrate the launch of his memoir, House of Stone, published by Granta Books in the UK on 2 August.

About the author

Anthony Shadid was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and former Baghdad bureau chief of the Washington Post. Over a fifteen-year career, he reported from most countries in the Middle East. He won his first Pulitzer Prize in 2004 in International Reporting for his coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the occupation which followed. He won a second in 2010 for his coverage of Iraq as the United States began its withdrawal. Shadid is the author of two previous books, Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats and the New Politics of Islam (2001), and Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War (2005), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US. Shadid died of an asthma attack while attempting to leave Syria on horseback on 16 February 2012.