Our Man in Iraq

A local journalist sends a distant relative to report on the war in Iraq, while he stays at home to sort out his love life and his professional career - all to varying degrees of success. As time goes on, things begin to unravel and he ends up having to fake his missing cousin's reports while struggling to hold on to his actress girlfriend. Our Man in Iraq is a take on the Iraqi conflict from the other side of Europe, where politics and nepotism collide and the confusing aftereffects of the recent Yugoslav wars mix with the joys and trials of modern life.

With an introduction by Tim Judah of The Economist.

'Robert Perisic is a light bright with intelligence and twinkling with irony, flashing us the news that postwar Croatia not only endures but matters.' Jonathan Franzen

'Robert Perisic depicts, with acerbic wit, a class of urban elites who are trying to reconcile their nineties rebellion with the reality of present-day Croatia. . . . The characters' snide remarks could easily sound cynical but the novel has a levity informed by the sense of social fluidity that comes with democracy.' The New Yorker

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Robert Perisic has created his own audience and his own position in modern Croatian literature, and his books portray an authentic view of society in transition and the (anti)heroes who inhabit it. He is the author of two collections of short stories and one poetry collection; his first novel, Our Man in Iraq, was the bestselling Croatian novel of 2008 and also received the most important Croatian literary award from the daily newspaper Jutarnji list. Robert Perisic's journalistic articles regularly appear in the respected Croatian weekly Globus.