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A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War
Top of the pile
85
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
79/100Critics
91/100Scholars
Author:
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Publisher:
Knopf
Date:
March 14, 2023
This is not a book about Iraq's history or an inventory of the many Middle Eastern wars that have consumed the nation over the past several decades. This is the tale of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniacal leader who shaped the state in his own image; a people who watched a foreign army invade, topple that leader, demolish the state, and then invent a new country; who experienced the horror of having their home fragmented into a hundred different cities.
What The Reviewers Say
Offers not simply an account of Iraq’s troubles but a powerful and beautifully written portrait of the soul and psychology of a nation reeling from one cataclysm to the next.
Abdul-Ahad has written an astonishing book. To read A Stranger in Your Own City is virtually to live through the past 40 wretched years of Iraq’s history.
An engaging blend of memoir, reportage and interviews. It is a story of catastrophic societal breakdown.
This superbly written mix of reportage and memoir is punctuated by the author’s distinctive illustrations.
