Recommendations from our site
“It’s the only book where I actually burst out laughing two or three times because it gets you. You’re in a deep and serious subject, but it’s able to deliver it in such an understandable, amusing, and readable way. As you say, it is a bit Bridget Jones, with a few storylines about relationships, romance, and love. It’s also about working in government agencies—the bureaucracy and some of the decisions that are made. But the main line that goes through it is about the vulnerability of the ISIS brides and how they potentially have been duped into being part of that world and how they’re now stuck in aid camps and have no route of repatriation in any way, shape, or form. That was enlightening to me.” Read more...
“I thought, okay, it will be a very serious book about fundamentalism and how it affects young girls like Shamima Begum, groomed young girls who were radicalised and went out to join ISIS. And it is about those girls. But, oh my God, this book is so funny. How she’s managed to make that subject funny and light, I don’t know.” Read more...
The Best Novels: The 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction
Kit de Waal, Novelist
