Loved it. Intelligent and genuinely made me laugh.
This book was recommended in our work Slack, and just pull quote for the book description, I found myself instantly buying it:
By normal, you mean like you? A slag with a saviour complex?
The story follows Nadia, an academic who is pulled into a job with the UN to apply her proposal to rehabilitate ISIS brides so they can leave the camps and return home.
What I really enjoyed about this book was the exposure to completely different backgrounds to my own. So for an example, Nadia is Muslim. She has turned her back on her faith. She's gone into academia, and she's now offered a job in the UN to help these ISIS brides.
Most of the characters are completely different to the people in my real life, but the writing is steeped in reality (the author's note at the end explains that she, Younis, was a humanitarian worker known for her expertise on contemporary Iraq, and that though fictionalised, there's a lot of real experience in the story).
Nadia's character is witty, flawed, pissed off, broken and I found myself actually laughing out loud at some of the lines from the book. The book's blurb includes the following line, which I absolutely felt was accurate:
A bitingly original, wildly funny and razor-sharp exploration of love, family, religion, radicalism[…]
I really enjoyed the book, and found it hard to put down - as seen in my 10 day read of what normally takes me a month.
For a first novel, from someone that on paper is very academic and doing very serious work, this is A*. Love it.
4 Highlights
The spectre of an omniscient God strengthens in moments like this. If you exist, I silently prayed, do me a favour and take it down a notch?
I'd like to sit on your face. Partly to stop you from talking.
My insides dropped and shifted, my organs playing a fleshy game of Tetris.
I'm not brave, I'm pissed off.