How Do You Know Dictators are Bad? They’ve Written Terrible Books!

I mean, I guess it makes sense: The kind of person who violently claws and maims one’s way to evil autocracy is likely the kind of person who can get themselves published.

And by “published,” I mean, write a really terrible book and get it printed. Name a despot, and dude’s got a book. A bad one.

• Muammar al-Gaddafi – Hallucinogenic stream of consciousness
• Saddam Hussein – erotic allegorical fiction
• Kim Jong Il – revolutionary film criticism
• Joseph Stalin – Georgian pastoral odes
• Ayatollah Khomeini – Persian mystical poetry

And the list goes on and on. Weird, right?Suzanne Merkelson has assembled a fascinating roundup for ForeignPolicy.com. “From suicidal astronauts to bestiality, you can learn a lot about what makes the world’s worst tyrants tick from the terrible books they write.”

Bad Politics, Worse Prose [ForeignPolicy.com]