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"Iraq. September 2003; it's six months after the US-led invasion, and the country is in anarchy - the infrastructure has collapsed, terrorist attacks have begun and the coalition has decided to rule directly via the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Rory Stewart, a young British diplomat, is appointed as the coalition deputy governor (CPA deputy governorate coordinator) of a province of 850,000 people in the southern marshland. There, in the cities of Amara and then Nasiriyah, he and his colleagues confront gangsters, Iranian-linked politicians, tribal vendettas and a full Islamist insurgency, in which Stewart is besieged in his compound under continual fire, struggling to keep his staff alive. They negotiate hostage releases, appoint Iraqi governors and police chiefs, patch up the shattered infrastructure and, in June 2004, hand over sovereignty to the Iraqi government."