A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War

SELECTED BY THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND DAUNTS BOOKS AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023WINNER OF THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024ONE 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 MOHAMMEDFrom Orwell Prize winning journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad comes a searing and nuanced biography of a lost IraqThis 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

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

• | Author: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
• | Publisher: Cornerstone
• | Publication Date: Feb 22, 2024
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781529157178
• | ISBN-10: 152915717X