Fundamentally

DEBUT Heartbroken after her longtime girlfriend breaks up with her, London academic Nadia Amin takes a job working for the UN in Iraq, where she is to create a program to deradicalize women who were ISIS brides. Her qualifications for this position are slim. Overwhelmed to be in a country where she does not understand the language, culture, or politics, she struggles with her job. Then she becomes captivated by the brashness and intelligence of one of the women in the camp and risks her position and her future to help her. While Nadia and her coworkers raise important questions about what drove these women to ISIS and how to rehabilitate them, Younis’s narrative sometimes deals with these issues on a surface level. Nadia is in her 30s, but her internal musings and dialogue can seem more like that of a rebellious teenager trying to be edgy. Note that the author herself has an impressive background working in Iraq and with women radicalized by ISIS.