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.
