Fundamentally
Nussaibah Younis

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Published: 2024

Longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction

‘By normal, you mean like you? A slag with a saviour complex?’

Nadia is an academic who’s been disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, Rosy. 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.

Sara is a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just fifteen.

Nadia is struck by how similar they are: both feisty and opinionated, from a Muslim background, with a shared love of Dairy Milk and rude pick-up lines. A powerful friendship forms between the two women, until a secret confession from Sara threatens everything Nadia has been working for.

A bitingly original, wildly funny and razor-sharp exploration of love, family, religion and the decisions we make in pursuit of belonging, Fundamentally upends and explores a defining controversy of our age with heart, complexity and humour.

Leafy plant illustration

Funny, irreverent, clever and shocking, this is a story of what happens to a young woman who is groomed into fundamentalism abroad, and more importantly what happens when she wants to come home. It’s a fascinating peak behind the curtain of the UN, told with wit, insider knowledge and is definitely not what you expect.

Kit de Waal

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