A Stranger in Your Own City
Travels in the Middle East’s Long War
-
- €15.99
-
- €15.99
Publisher Description
SELECTED BY THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND DAUNTS BOOKS AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
WINNER OF THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
ONE OF PROSPECT'S POLITICS & REPORTAGE BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2023
'Exquisite . . . A genuine, melancholy masterpiece' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
'A journalistic marvel' JAMES MEEK
'A powerful, unforgettable book' NADIFA MOHAMMED
From Orwell Prize winning journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad comes a searing and nuanced biography of a lost Iraq
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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Abdul-Ahad's kaleidoscopic and incisive debut recounts the 20 years since U.S.-led coalition forces took control of Baghdad. He begins with his childhood memories of Saddam Hussein ("the embodiment of our national narrative") pinning medals on the chests of his generals during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War and charts how sanctions imposed after the First Gulf War, combined with Hussein's corrupt patronage system, turned Iraq into "a nation of hustlers." In scenes of the chaotic 2003 takeover and its aftermath, Abdul-Ahad describes how Hussein's toppling unleashed sectarian wars between Iraq's Sunni and Shia factions, weakened democracy in the Middle East, and emboldened other dictators in the region. Explaining how Sunni insurgents captured Fallujah and other cities in 2014, Abdul-Ahad notes that in the "all-embracing corruption culture of the Iraqi state, the depravity and cronyism of the security services had reached surreal levels." Interleaving his own observations as a Baghdad native and former translator for Western journalists with those of other ordinary Iraqis, Abdul-Ahad details bloody sectarian battles, heart-pounding run-ins with ISIS henchmen, and a populace trying to reclaim its city and country from Iraq's greedy ruling class and those still "immersed in their selfish sectarian mentalities." It's a master class in reporting. Illus.
