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Indian author’s book on Iraq to be filmed
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Imperial Life in the Emerald City, the acclaimed non-fiction book on Iraq by Washington Post senior editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran, is being adapted for a major Hollywood film.
Paul Greengrass, who specialises in dramatisation of real-life events, will direct the film for Universal Pictures. The director has earlier made films like United 93, about one of the hijacked 9/11 flights, and the $100 million The Bourne Ultimatum with Matt Damon.
Damon, star of Ocean’s Eleven and its two sequels, is likely to star in Imperial Life in the Emerald City slated for release in 2009.
The book was published last year by Knopf/Random House and won the £30,000 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction for 2007.
It is based on Chandrasekaran’s experiences in Iraq, where he was stationed as the Post’s Baghdad bureau chief in 2003-04.
Chandrasekaran’s first book as author is “an unprecedented account of life in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq”.
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Christian fundamentalists disrupt Hindu invocation in US Senate |
Invited by the Senate to offer Hindu prayers, a priest from Nevada was disrupted by Christian activists, marring a historic first for the chamber.
Three protesters said to belong to the Christian Right anti-abortion group Operation Save America interrupted priest Rajan Zed by loudly asking for God’s forgiveness for allowing the ‘false prayer’ of a Hindu in the Senate chamber.
Democratic Senator Bob Casey, serving as presiding officer for the session, asked the sergeant at arms to restore order, as Zed in traditional robes continued through the invocation chosen from the Rig Veda and Bhagavad Gita.
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