WINNER OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE • In this “courageous” (The Washington Post) memoir of survival, a former captive of the Islamic State tells her harrowing and ultimately inspiring story.
Nadia Murad was born and raised in Kocho, a small village of farmers and shepherds in northern Iraq. A member of the Yazidi community, she and her brothers and sisters lived a quiet life. Nadia had dreams of becoming a history teacher or opening her own beauty salon.
On August 15th, 2014, when Nadia was just twenty-one years old, this life ended. Islamic State militants massacred the people of her village, executing men who refused to convert to Islam and women too old to become sex slaves. Six of Nadia’s brothers were killed, and her mother soon after, their bodies swept into mass graves. Nadia was taken to Mosul and forced, along with thousands of other Yazidi girls, into the ISIS slave trade.
Nadia would be held captive by several militants and repeatedly raped and beaten. Finally, she managed a narrow escape through the streets of Mosul, finding shelter in the home of a Sunni Muslim family whose eldest son risked his life to smuggle her to safety.
Today, Nadia's story—as a witness to the Islamic State's brutality, a survivor of rape, a refugee, a Yazidi—has forced the world to pay attention to an ongoing genocide. It is a call to action, a testament to the human will to survive, and a love letter to a lost country, a fragile community, and a family torn apart by war.
ISIS. Daesh. Words guaranteed to cause fear in the hearts of certain populations - and dollar signs in others. Nadia Murad describes the decimation of her village, her capture, her sale, her multiple rapes, and her eventual escape to the reader in this book, and it is horrifying. What is *almost* as horrifying is how little the international community did to try and help these people, to help them recover from what amounts to an attempt at genocide.
The book does deal with hard topics - but it would be appropriate for high schoolers, and maybe even more mature middle school kids. She discusses rapes, and murder, and the buying/selling of people - but she never ventures into overly detailed territory. It's a pretty matter-of-fact accounting, which is somewhat chilling in and of itself.
Overall, this book is a call to action. A call to hold people to account for the atrocities they have committed (and are STILL committing). An explanation, and a plea for awareness. And above all - a story of one who escaped, but will bear the scars forever.
