Kahramana (And Other Stories)

Taking its title from the savvy, street-wise slave girl in A Thousand And One Nights, this debut collection from Mosul-born Anoud, celebrates the strongest of women in the toughest of predicaments. From the heroine of the title story, fighting her way out of forced marriage to the leader of an ISIS-style jihadi army, to the schoolgirl learning how to pick her way through potential car-bombs on her way to school in war-torn Baghdad, to the destitute refugee found in a London cafe raving at a TV screen broadcasting news of Trump’s travel ban; these stories run the gamut on the myriad ways war impacts on the lives and freedoms of women. Anoud is a pseudonym, originally adopted out of concern for her relatives’ safety back home in Mosul during the period it was held by ISIS, which the author has now kept. She is a journalist and documentary researcher, having worked and written for the BBC and The Guardian. She grew up between Mosul, Baghdad and Ireland, and currently lives in New York (spending some of the year in Algiers).