Guest House for Young Widows:
among the women of ISIS
Overview
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON FICTION AND THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE.
A GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR.
An intimate, deeply reported account of the women who made a shocking decision: to leave their ordinary lives behind and join the Islamic State.
These women, some still in school, some with university degrees, many with cosmopolitan dreams of travel and adventure, left their homes and lives in the West to join what they thought would be a movement of justice and piety. Instead, they found themselves trapped in the most brutal terrorist regime of the twenty-first century. Azadeh Moaveni tells their stories with little intervention, providing just enough context for us to see how and why they were pulled into this world.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Other rights
- Hardback
- 234mm x 153mm
- 352 pages
- 9781912854608
- GBP£16.99
- 7 October 2019
- UK & Cw (ex Can)
- NA PRH
Awards
- Shortlisted for the 2019 The Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction
- Longlisted for the 2020 ABDA Best Designed Nonfiction Book
- Shortlisted for the 2020 Rathbones Folio Prize
- Longlisted for the 2020 The Orwell Prize
Praise
‘A skilful, sensitive report … Superb.’
‘Azadeh Moaveni has written a powerful, indispensable book on a challenging subject: the inner lives and motivations of women who joined or supported the Islamic State militant group. It is a great read, digestible and almost novelistic, but it is much more than that. Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS tackles many taboos that have hampered clear-eyed discussion of Islamist extremism in general and ISIS in particular. The book provides an illuminating, much-needed corrective to stock narratives, not only about the group that deliberately and deftly terrified officials and publics across the world, but also about the larger ‘war on terror’ and the often ineffective, even counterproductive policies of Western and Middle Eastern governments.’
About the Author
Azadeh Moaveni is a journalist, writer and academic, who has been covering the the Middle East for nearly two decades. She started reporting in Cairo in 1999 while on a Fulbright fellowship, and worked across the region for the next several years, covering Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. Her work has focused throughout on how women and girls are impacted by political instability and conflict, as well as the interplay between militarism, Islamism and women’s social status and rights. A Pulitzer finalist, she is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Iranian Nobel Peace Laurate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening, which has been translated into over forty languages. She writes for the London Review of Books, TheGuardian, and TheNew York Times, among other publications. She is Director of the Project for Gender and Conflict at the International Crisis Group and Lecturer in Journalism at New York University, London.