The President's Gardens The President's Gardens The President’s Gardens: is a novel written by the Iraqi author Muhsin al-Ramli. Set during the last fifty years of Iraqi history, this novel tells the story of three friends, exploring how ordinary people have been affected by historic events such as wars, the blockade of Iraq and the invasion of Kuwait. It examines the gap between the lifestyle of those in power and ordinary citizens. During the chaos of occupation, one of them loses his life, like so many caught between loyalists of the old and new regimes. "The President's Gardens" helps the reader understand the
There Should Have Been Castles There Should Have Been Castles There Should have been Castles is a 1980 romantic comedy novel by Herman Raucher. It is a roman a clef, with Raucher acknowledging that the male and female main characters are based on him and his wife, to whom he had been married for twenty years at the time of the book's publication. It is the 1950s. Ben Webber is a cocky but disillusioned young man who has spent the last few years of his life waiting for a neighborhood girl—in his eyes, the epitome of lost virtue and beauty—to reach the age of consent