For Alsamari, an Iraqi-born first-time author best known for playing the lead 9/11 hijacker in the movie United 93
, real life had already proved dramatic and terrifying, as this gripping memoir wastes no time in conveying. Raised for several years in Manchester, England, Alsamari was unexpectedly sent back to Baghdad by his father a few years before the first Gulf War and he spends the next 10 years dreaming of a way out. Induction in the army in 1994—a punishing experience that the author describes in characteristically straightforward and persuasive prose—leads to a lifelong sentence: recruitment into Saddam's military intelligence apparatus. With the help of his beloved uncle Saad, Alsamari begins the long and perilous journey to political asylum in England, where he eventually engineers the rescue of his family, now gravely endangered by his desertion. The increasingly breathless account—filled with the best and worst of human actions—comes across in vivid and telling scenes spanning Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia and the U.K. Alsamari's moving personal story is representative of a more general plight, which, as broached in an eloquent and thoughtful epilogue, has only grown more complex after 9/11. (Mar.)
