#Iraq20: New book explores what it’s like being a stranger in your own city

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was born in Iraq in 1975. He began writing for the Guardian and the Washington Post after the US-led invasion in 2003 and has reported across Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan for the past twenty years. Putting the experiences of civilians at the heart of his writing, he has won numerous awards including the British Press Awards’ Foreign Reporter of the Year, the Orwell Prize for Journalism and two Emmys. 

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s new book A Stranger in Your Own City has been described by William Dalrymple as being; 

“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.” 

According to Nadifa Mohamed, A Stranger in Your Own City is a book where; 

“In this searing and clear-eyed account of Iraq’s last two decades of conflict Ghaith Abdul-Ahad expresses the broken-heartedness of a man who loses his country over and again to sectarianism and bloodshed. Abdul-Ahad writes with bitter humour and an unsentimental style, using a cast of characters - militiamen, teachers, torturers and doctors - to illuminate actions that seem almost impossible to understand; his reporting on Iraq strips away any myths and refuses to romanticise or glorify anyone or anything. It is a powerful, unforgettable book.”