A Stranger in Your Own City

From Orwell Prize-winning journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad comes a searing and nuanced biography of a lost Iraq.

'Exquisite . . . A genuine, melancholy masterpiece' - WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

'A journalistic marvel' - JAMES MEEK

'A powerful, unforgettable book' - NADIFA MOHAMMED

This is the story of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniac leader who shaped the state in his own image. Then one day, after yet another war, a foreign army invaded, toppled the leader, destroyed the state, and proceeded to invent a new country. This is the story of a people who watched with horror as their world fragmented into a hundred different cities, as walls rose between them and bodies piled in the streets.

From the American invasion to the Arab Spring, ISIS and beyond, A Stranger in Your Own City offers a remarkable de-centring of the West in the history and contemporary situation of the region. What comes to the fore is the effect on the ground—the human cost, the shifting allegiances, the generational change.

'Shatters western assumptions . . . and offers cautious hope' - The Observer

'Haunting' - Financial Times