Achilles Trap (2026)

This English-language paperback is the inside story of America’s long and ruinous relationship with Saddam Hussein, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars. Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2024 and named a best book of 2024 by The New Yorker, it untangles the people, power plays and geopolitics that led to America’s disastrous war with Iraq, detailing America’s fundamental miscalculations during its decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Beginning with Saddam’s rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons programme, Steve Coll traces his motives through his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members and generals forced to defer to a leader responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of many more. Using unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam’s own transcripts and audio files, Coll portrays a dictator convinced that the world was out to get him. The book shows how corruption, diplomatic lies and vanity on both sides led to avoidable errors of statecraft, immense human suffering and permanent changes to the political landscape.