A young Kurdish shepherd Cotkar witnesses the slaughter of his family and most of the inhabitants in his home town of Halabja, situated in the Valley of the Peacock Angel, from the relative safety of his hut, high on the side of a mountain above the town. He hears the shells falling, and sees what seemed a straightforward attack become even more horrific as the people in the town realise they are being attacked with chemical weapons.
In this exceptional and heartbreaking new novel, Martin Malone explores the events of that attack from the perspective of the characters who peopled the Valley of the Peacock Angel.
Malone conceived the novel while serving with a UN observer force in Northern Iraq. After several attempts to write the book from an Irish character’s perspective, he finally gave in and listened to the voices of the locals.
