A Stranger in Your Own City by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

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A Stranger in Your Own City by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

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A Stranger in Your Own City by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

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
An excellent and haunting account of the impact of western policies premised on sectarianism that engulfed the country after 2003 -- Charles Clover * Financial Times *
A bracing read, punctuated by accounts of violence, torture and extortion * The Guardian *
This book shatters western assumptions, shows the effect on Iraqis of cycles of violence - and offers cautious hope . . A Stranger in Your Own City reminds us is that sectarianism was imposed on many Iraqis post-invasion by new rulers who . . . needed a political system based on sectarianism. This isn't just a book about war. The epilogue shows it's also about the generation who saw the folly in the invasion's design and rose up. At some point, change is inevitable. -- Renad Mansour * The Observer *
A Stranger in Your Own City is a stunning piece of emotional and psychological topography, charting the many clashing lives of pre- and post-invasion Iraq. Unlike a parade of books that focused predominantly on the Westerners who helped unleash so much of the country's carnage, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad centers the people who call Iraq home. Through visceral, sometimes first-hand accounts, he tells the stories of both victims and perpetrators, never retreating into artificial neutrality. This is a vital archive of a time and place in history that, in the post-9/11 age, so many would rather forget, a book that's at once difficult to read and impossible to put down -- Omar El Akkad, author of WHAT STRANGE PARADISE
A crucial and important new voice, as brilliant, passionate and fearless as he is well-informed, skeptical and nuanced. But Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is also a writer of exquisite prose, whose thoughtful, moving and often disturbing work elevates war reportage and the memoir of conflict and loss to levels rarely seen since Michael Herr's Dispatches or James Fenton's All the Wrong Places. A Stranger in Your Own City is that rarity: a genuine melancholy masterpiece' -- William Dalrymple, author of RETURN OF A KING
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was born in Iraq in 1975. He began writing for the Guardian and the Washington Post after the US-led invasion in 2003 and has reported across Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan for the past twenty years. Putting the experiences of civilians at the heart of his writing, he has won numerous awards including the British Press Awards' Foreign Reporter of the Year, the Orwell Prize for Journalism and two Emmys. He currently lives in Istanbul.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9781529151534
ISBN 10 1529151538
Title A Stranger in Your Own City
Author Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Condition Unavailable
Binding type Hardback
Publisher Cornerstone
Year published 2023-03-02
Number of pages 480
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note Unavailable