A Stranger in Your Own City

>When the “Shock and Awe” campaign began in March 2003, Abdul-Ahad was an architect. Within months he would become a translator, then a fixer, then a reporter for The Guardian and elsewhere, chronicling the unbuilding of his centuries-old cosmopolitan city. Beginning at that moment and spanning twenty years, Abdul-Ahad’s book decenters the West and in its place focuses on everyday people, soldiers, mercenaries, citizens blown sideways through life by the war, and the proliferation of sectarian battles that continue to this day. Here is their Iraq, seen from the inside: the human cost of violence, the shifting allegiances, the generational change. - [publisher](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/722123/a-stranger-in-your-own-city-by-ghaith-abdul-ahad/)

Set in

• ★
  Baghdad · Iraq

  Baghdad from 2003 onward; Abdul-Ahad chronicles how his native city became foreign through war and sectarianism
  ★ primary
• ★
  Baghdad, Iraq · Iraq

  Home city — twenty years of life in pre- and post-invasion Iraq
  ★ primary