Baghdad book market turns the page on a new Iraq


  • World
  • Thursday, 28 Jun 2018

Iraqi women shop for books at Mutanabi Street in Baghdad, June 22, 2018. Picture taken June 22, 2018. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - When Maher Abu Hissam started his Baghdad bookshop two decades ago he was selling up to 40 books a day, such was the hunger for literature in the days of Saddam Hussein, even though the regime banned anything it did not like.

Censorship was lifted when a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam in 2003 but far from an upturn in sales these days Hissam sometimes sells just a few books at his shop on Mutanabbi Street.

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