I always enjoy books that take me to a different time and place and When the Apricots Bloom did just that. I really knew very little about the "real" Iraq - most of what I knew was from the news during and after the wars. I had once heard from archaeology students about what happened to the national museum after the Americans came in and it was not guarded so it suffered a great deal. I feel like When the Apricots Bloom gave me a window into what it was like not only in the period between the two Gulf Wars when Saddam Hussein was still in power, but also about what it was like before he took power when Iraq was a flourishing place and with leading education and health care for its citizens. One thing I did wonder about was the western, colonial perspective embodied in the story here - can someone (even someone who lived in Iraq) who is not Iraqi really convey the story from the Iraqi perspective. I don't think so, so in the end I would say that this is an interesting book that helped me understand what it was like to be a westerner living in Iraq while Saddam Hussein was still in power, but not really what it was like to be an Iraqi during that same time.