Mahmoud Saeed (1939-2025) was an Iraqi author who left Iraq in 1985 after being arrested and imprisoned six times. After the 1991 Gulf War, he returned to Iraq only to flee again to Dubai. He wrote more than twenty novels and short-story collections, but two of his novels were destroyed by the Baath Party regime in Iraq and another three were lost. His novels Rue Ben Barka and Saddam City received special critical acclaim. His novel The World through the Eyes of Angels won the 2010 King Fahd Center Award and was published by Syracuse University Press in 2011. He won several other awards and was recognized by Amnesty International for his promotion of human rights. His stories appeared in more than 200 literatures collections, and his writings won five Arabic language literature awards.
At MacDowell, he worked on a historical novel involving the siege of Mosul by the armies of Nader Shah in 1743.
