Back to Samarra Once More

Appointment in Samarra (based on a short story by Somerset Maugham) is a novel by the great Irish-American writer John O’Hara, and its central motif is the inexorable certainties of fate. In its preface, a servant meets the figure of Death in the great souk of Baghdad. When Death sees him, she makes a fearsome grimace. The servant hurries home and tells his master of this fearful portent that clearly indicates that Death is about to claim him. The master duly gives the servant permission to flee to the safety of Samarra. The master then goes into the Baghdad market, seeking the figure of Death. He finds her skulking in the shadows and asks why she threatened his servant. “I made no threat,” she whispered. “I was astonished to see him in Baghdad. For I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

This report appears in the latest Quadrant

Ireland is rather like that servant, but now stuck in a serial nightmare in which it constantly revisits Samarra, but each time for…