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.

While many books have been written on the Iraq war and its legacies, this one matters because it shatters some of the assumptions held in western capitals about the country.

There is no silver lining of hope or resilience; just bewilderment and loss, made additionally poignant by the author’s elegant pencil-and-watercolor illustrations..

There could be no better guide to the upheaval of Iraq than a local who is as ambivalent about his role as witness and chronicler as he is committed to it. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad weaves his own fundamental moral and political quandaries into his record, giving a deeply insightful account of what it means to be from a place as it is torn apart by war and the forces of occupation; what it feels and looks like to witness your country being dismantled and blown apart..

Abdul-Ahad writes meaningfully.

Kaleidoscopic and incisive.