Soon to be always a major motion picture starring Ben Kingsley and Josh Hutcherson

The year is 1997, Michael Soussan, a fresh-faced young graduate takes up a fresh job in the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food system, the biggest humanitarian operation in the organization’s background. His mission is normally to greatly help Iraqi civilians survive the devastating impact of financial sanctions which were imposed following 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Like a gaffe-prone newbie in an environment of private taboos, Soussan challenges to negotiate about Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Program in International Diplomacy the increasing paranoia of his incomprehensible employer and the inner workings of one from the world’s notoriously organic bureaucracies. But simply because he learns even more about the huge sums of money flowing through the program, it becomes clear that isn’t what it appears. Soussan becomes aware that Saddam Hussein is normally extracting illegal kickbacks, a discovery that models him on the collision course with the organization’s leadership. On March 8, 2004, within a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Soussan becomes the first insider to demand ‘an independent investigation’ of the U.N.’s dealings with Saddam Hussein. Seven days afterwards, a humiliated Kofi Annan appointed Paul Volcker to business lead a team of sick worldwide investigators, whose results resulted in a huge selection of prosecutions in multiple countries, a lot of which remain ongoing.

Backstabbing for Beginners is at once a witty tale of one man’s political coming of age, and a stinging indictment of the hypocrisy that prevailed at the heart of one of the world’s most idealistic institutions.