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.
Guest House for Young Widows : among the women of ISIS
Description
Author Description
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 The New 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.