A Stranger in Your Own City

<p><b>ONE OF THE <i>FINANCIAL TIMES'</i> BEST SUMMER BOOKS OF 2023<br><br>'Exquisite... a genuine melancholy masterpiece' </b>William Dalrymple author of <i>The Anarchy</i><br><br><b>'A powerful unforgettable book'</b> Nadifa Mohamed author of <i>The Fortune Men</i><br><br>--<br><br><b>A work of great beauty and tragedy from a gifted storyteller and reporter. Published on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq it places the experience of ordinary civilians at its heart.</b><br><br>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 <i>A Stranger in Your Own City</i> 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.<br><br>--<br><br><b>'Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is a journalistic marvel and a terrible joy as a writer never wearying of the world as he maps its cruelties. Eloquent and compassionate vulnerable scathing and funny'</b> James Meek author of <i>To Calais in Ordinary Time</i><br><br><b>'A stunning piece of emotional and psychological topography charting the many clashing lives of pre- and post-invasion Iraq a book that's at once difficult to read and impossible to put down' </b>Omar El Akkad author of <i>What Strange Paradise</i></p>