The next book to be featured on the Sara Cox Radio 2 Book Club is Fundamentally, the powerful, gripping and funny debut novel by Nussaibah Younis. The book was released on 25 February and Nussaibah’s interview with Sara is on BBC Sounds from Tuesday 18 March.
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Fundamentally
When academic Nadia is disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, she decides to make a getaway – accepting a UN job in Iraq. Tasked with rehabilitating ISIS women, Nadia becomes mired in the opaque world of international aid, surrounded by bumbling colleagues.
But then Nadia meets Sara, a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just fifteen, and she is struck by how similar their stories are. Both from a Muslim background, both feisty and opinionated, with a shared love of Dairy Milk and rude pick-up lines, Sara and Nadia immediately connect and a powerful friendship forms. When Sara confesses a secret, Nadia is forced to make a difficult choice.
A bitingly original, wildly funny and razor-sharp exploration of love, family, religion, radicalism, and the decisions we make in pursuit of connection and belonging, Fundamentally upends and explores a defining controversy of our age with heart, complexity and humour – delivered by one of the most fearless and talented new voices in contemporary fiction.
About the author
Dr Nussaibah Younis is a peacebuilding practitioner and a globally recognised expert on contemporary Iraq. For several years, Nussaibah advised the Iraqi government on proposed programs to de-radicalise women affiliated with ISIS. She has a PhD in International Affairs from the University of Durham, and a BA in Modern History and English from the University of Oxford. Dr Younis was a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC, where she directed the Task Force on the Future of Iraq and offered strategic advice to US government agencies on Iraq policy. She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, and has published Op-Eds in The Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the New York Times.
She was born in the UK to an Iraqi father and a Pakistani mother, and had a devout Muslim upbringing, studying with Anwar al-Awlaki who later joined Al-Qaeda. She herself avoided radicalisation and is deeply empathetic towards teenage girls who were less fortunate. She has worked in Washington D.C., Dubai, Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad and currently lives in London. Fundamentally is her first novel.
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