Iraqi women

Untold stories from 1948 to the present

Nadje Sadig Al-Ali, Zed Books, paperback, 292 pages, £14.99

Iraq dominates the media as a “problem” (why did we invade, when will we pull out, how did it all go so wrong) but what we don’t really see, arguably, is Iraq itself. Nadje Sadig Al-Ali’s book helps redress that imbalance, putting the life stories of Iraqi women, from 1948 until the present day, centre stage.

Far from being “another book about Islam and the plight of Muslim women”, it looks at how Iraqis of widely differing cultural and religious backgrounds, from conservative to communist, lived in and through Iraq’s post colonial era: its 1958 revolution, the rise of the Ba’ath regime, the Iraq-Iran and Gulf wars, sanctions, the 2003 invasion and the subsequent occupation.

This is a considered and sympathetic account, acknowledging for example both the “state feminism” of the early Ba’ath era and the repression and violence that forced so many into exile.