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 ... Mr. Abdul-Ahad delicately evokes the fears and hopes of a nation eager to be rid of Saddam but fearful of the consequences ... Early in the book, images of violence are visceral and shocking ... There is a challenge and a steely optimism there, one that would have rattled my confidence back in 2007, but that gives me hope in 2023.
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 ... His descriptions are vivid and humorous.
An engaging blend of memoir, reportage and interviews. It is a story of catastrophic societal breakdown ... Interviews shed light on the personal motivations of ordinary Iraqis who participated in sectarian terrorism ... The book is a bracing read, punctuated by accounts of violence, torture and extortion.
This superbly written mix of reportage and memoir is punctuated by the author’s distinctive illustrations ... Makes vivid the horror of two blood-soaked decades.
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 ... This isn’t just a book about war. The epilogue shows it’s also about the generation who saw the folly in the invasion’s design and rose up.
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.
