When Tyrants and War Criminals Turn to Literature

After yesterday's post featuring the cover of Benito Mussolini's The Cardinal's Mistress, James Bridle of Bookkake (whose beautiful books I talked about here) pointed me in the direction of this article he had written about war criminals and tyrants who have written novels. James has also written a book of alcoholic recipes, Cooking with Booze, under the name George Harvey Bone: if you get the reference to one of my favourite books ever, then you know he must be a man of distinction and culture.

In any case, it prompted me to hunt down the covers of these books by murderous nationalists, zealots and lunatics.

First, Saddam Hussein, romance novelist:

 

The French certainly do better than the English-speaking people here. Here's the original Arabic edition of his later work, Be Gone Demons!

Then there's this work of science-fiction from Osama bin Laden:

Finally, here's Radovan Karadžić’s novel, The Miraculous Chronicle of the Night. Karadžić spent 10 years of his time as a fugitive posing as an alternative medicine practitioner, so perhaps some New Age self-help book is yet to emerge.