Baghdad, city of romance.

This book was an interesting balance between the violent Baghdad of today and the genteel place of luxury gardens that it once was.

Current day Adnan struggles to run his bookshop amongst bombings, terror and intermittent electricity. His wife is desperate to leave the city, but Adnan is attached to the shop, which he inherited from his father. Although he has reluctantly agreed to leave, he is still nostalgically pottering around, when he comes across an old handwritten memoir hidden on shelves right at the back.
It immediately grabs his attention and he spends several nights ensconced in the shop, reading by candlelight.

The manuscript details the story of Ali, a young farmer who branches out into gardening and makes quite a name for himself in 50's Baghdad. Unfortunately he falls in love with a young lady whom he is prohibited from marrying. When the narrative of the sad love story comes to a sudden end, Adnan uses his contacts to try and find out what happened - and he takes us with him; we too are longing to know how the story ends.

This book has a beautiful cover, which appealed to me immediately. There is some fairly floral language, but this is not inappropriate when reading a book set in the Middle East. The story is told in an interesting way, using Adnan's bookshop and later his contacts. It is also well read in the audiobook version, by Randal Schaffer.

Ahmad Ardalan has other books set in Iraq and I am hoping that it won't be too long before these are also available as audiobooks.

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Fantastic story

Really enjoyed this audio book,read the book some time ago, so I thought I will check out the audio book, was not disappointed, it was very well read and written, hope we get some more audio books by this brilliant writer

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What a wonderful book!

Would you listen to The Gardener of Baghdad again? Why?

This is a book I would listen to again.

What about Randal Schaffer’s performance did you like?

The narrator was great.

Any additional comments?

This book was gifted to me in exchange for an honest review. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it was beautifully written and the characters were very likable. What I loved most about it was the description of Baghdad, the author has a beautiful way of taking the listener through his writing to the wonderful city and bringing it alive in our imagination. I would highly recommend this book and will definitely be looking for other books by this author.

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1 person found this helpful

Wonderful Story

Highly recommend this Book. Wonderful story excellent writing. You won't be disappointed with this read.

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A warm read, feels like a turkish drama

I thoroughly enjoyed this work, I could feel the warmth and generousity of the middle eastern culture through this book, lives broken in yet another political upheaval. Albeit short , there was room to develop other characters maybe a bit more on the revolution , it felt very romeo and juliet like ..perhaps this was the intention of the writer, all the same a must read.

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