PARIS, Oct 17: French publisher Jean-Paul Bertrand says he’s acquired the rights to a novel, ‘Zabiba and the King’, which is to be published early next year.

The book, which is the first novel by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, “speaks in an allegorical fashion about what is happening presently in Iraq,” said Jean-Paul Bertrand, who heads an important French publishing house, Editions du Rocher.

Rights from the book will be paid to the Iraqi branch of the Red Crescent, and will be earmarked for victims of trade embargo.

The original Arab-language version of the book was published in Baghdad back in November 2000, but anonymously.

It was only last April, when the book was transformed into a play, that the theatrical version’s director Sami Abdul Hamid admitted that in fact the author of the work was the Iraqi head of state himself.