Baghdad, July 1958. King Faisal II, a gentle young man more interested in his upcoming marriage than matters of state, is the last king of a nation simmering with discontent. He is protected by a loyal Royal Guard, including Lafi Al-Azmi, a man who believes in the honor of the crown. But in the city's barracks and back rooms, a secret society of nationalist officers, led by the calculating Colonel Qasim and the fiery Colonel Arif, is finalizing a plan to drench the capital in blood. When the coup begins, it is swift, brutal, and absolute. The monarchy is annihilated in a sun-drenched palace garden, and Lafi becomes a traumatized survivor, his life and loyalty shattered by the murder of his king.

The new Iraqi Republic is born, promising a new dawn of freedom and justice. But the revolution immediately turns on itself. The alliance between its leaders fractures, plunging the nation into a new cycle of conspiracy and betrayal. Watching from the shadows is the Ba'ath Party, a disciplined and ruthless organization with its own vision for Iraq. Among them is a young, ambitious, and terrifyingly patient operative from Tikrit: Saddam Hussein.

Told through the eyes of two men on opposite sides of history—Lafi, the tragic witness to the old world's end, and Omar, a Ba'athist idealist who becomes a complicit insider in the new regime's machinery of fear—The Last King of Baghdad is a monumental historical thriller spanning fifty years of coups, purges, and wars.

From the halls of power where alliances are forged and broken, to the bloody front lines of the Iran-Iraq War and the chilling purges of the Ba'ath Party, this meticulously researched novel exposes the tragic and violent heart of modern Iraqi history. It is a story of how the dream of a republic died, and how the patient predator who watched it all unfold finally rose from the ashes to become a dictator, casting a shadow that would stretch for decades.