Baghdad Burning - A Young Woman's Diary from a War Zone

Author: Riverbend
Foreword/Introductio: Ahdaf Soueif/James Ridgeway
Publisher: Kali/Women Unlimited
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 286
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8188965340

Description

In August 2003, a 25 year old Iraqi woman calling herself Riverbend provided eyewitness accounts of the bombings, kidnappings and night-time raids by US soldiers that constitute daily life in Baghdad. Her journal has gathered a worldwide audience hungry for news unfiltered by the mainstream media.

Both personal and political, Riverbend writes of the impact on her family, of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses, of how the rights of women are falling victim to emergent fundamentalisms.

Describing the reality of regime change in Iraq in a voice in turn outraged and witty, both hard-hitting and deeply moving, Riverbend bears witness to the events shaping the fate of her homeland.

REVIEWS

Anyone who cares about the war in Iraq must read this book.
-Susan Sarandon

Passionate, frustrated, sarcastic, and sometimes hopeful…Riverbend is most compelling when she give cultural object lessons in everything from the changing status of Iraqi women to Ramadan, the Iraqi educational system, the significance of date palms and the details from a perspective too often overlooked, ignored, or suppressed.
-Publishers Weekly

In a voice that grips with drama and cuts to core with humour, Riverbend reports the personal side of war as no other account I know of does. Anyone who cares about the war in Iraq must read this book.
-Susan Sarandon