A work of great beauty and tragedy from a gifted storyteller and reporter. Published on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq,it places the experience of ordinary civilians at its heart.
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.
Publisher: CornerstoneISBN: 9781529151534Number of pages: 480Weight: 723 gDimensions: 240 x 162 x 42 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'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
Kommentar