Somewhat uncommonly among Iraqi narratives, The Tobacco Keeper explicitly suggests the nation’s current violence could have its origins in the attacks on the nation’s Jews in 1941.

This is not to say that Bader in any way exculpates American power. He does not; indeed, he has vivid things to say about American companies and interests.

The nameless, questioning Iraqi journalist opens and closes the novel. Within, he is writing a biography of the fictional violinist Kamel Medhat, who was assassinated in Baghdad at the age of 80.

In trying to explain the life and death of Medhat, the narrator is also trying to tell the story of his native Baghdad. Who was to blame for the Baghdad of 2006? We are not given a single culprit. The best we have is a starting point for the current violence. This is “the Farhoud incident,” which followed the May 1941 revolution.

In this complex, challenging, and unconventional novel, Iraqi author Ali Bader takes on nothing less than the ethnic and political history of the Middle East from 1926 - 2006 for his scope. An unnamed Iraqi writer has been asked by USA Today News to travel to Baghdad to ghostwrite an article about the murder of Kamal Medhat, an eighty-year-old Iraqi violinist.

Kamal Medhat, it turns out, is one of three completely different identities and separate cultural backgrounds used by the same man, the only common thread being his virtuosic skill at the violin, and the ghostwriter is hard pressed to follow the violinist's trail as he moves through Iraq, Iran, Syria, Russia, and even Czechoslovakia.