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" - 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." - The Observer

"A sobering, blistering frontline account of internecine warfare in a region crying for peace" - Kirkus Reviews

"Kaleidoscopic and incisive . . . 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" - Publishers Weekly

"A powerful, unflinching eyewitness account of what happened to Iraq, then Syria, after the US invasion of March 2003... a superbly written mix of reportage and memoir is punctuated by the author's distinctive illustrations... a book that makes vivid the horror of two blood-soaked decades" - The Times

"There have been numerous accounts of the Iraq War and the bloody upheavals of its aftermath from soldiers, historians and commentators, but fewer from the Iraqis who were caught up in its sequence of tragedies . . . Abdul-Ahad's interviewees variously describe corruption, brutality, torture, fanaticism, nihilism and fatalism. Abdul-Ahad recounts it all in evocative prose that makes the indictment that underlies not just his words, but also those of his fellow Iraqis, all the more potent." - New Statesmen

"An astonishing book" - Irish Times