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> <p><b>A <i>FINANCIAL TIMES</i> BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023</b><br><br>???????'Exquisite . . . A genuine, melancholy masterpiece' <b>WILLIAM DALRYMPLE</b><br>'A journalistic marvel' <b>JAMES MEEK</b><br>'A powerful, unforgettable book' <b>NADIFA MOHAMMED</b><br><br><b>From Orwell Prize winning journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad comes a searing and nuanced biography of a lost Iraq</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.<br><br>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>'Shatters western assumptions . . . and offers cautious hope' <b><i>The Observer</i></b><br>'Haunting' <b><i>Financial Times</i></b></p>