Nussaibah Younis, Fundamentally: A Novel, Tiny Reparations Books (Penguin Random House), New York, 2025. Released in the United States Feb 25, 2025.

Through a series of strange events, in March of 2010 I found myself in Afghanistan as an armed contractor, just six months after I had retired from the Army. This introduction to the “shadier” side of the Global War on Terror was quite the change from the regimented life I’d led during my two uniformed tours in Iraq. One evening, as a group of us—former military, academics, adventurers, do-gooders—gathered at Bagram swapping stories, one Foreign Service Officer (a fellow traveler) looked around at us all with a keen eye, taking in all the raw and varied humanity. Insert “Star Wars Bar Scene” metaphor here. She then wryly observed, “If you’re in Afghanistan, and you’re not in uniform, there’s a story.”

In her debut novel Fundamentally, Nussaibah Younis gives her readers a picture into the life experienced by civilians in conflict zones, using a fictionalized United Nations Mission in Iraq as her literary device.1 Her protagonist Nadia—a British academic of Pakistani heritage—has been recruited by the UN to attempt to deradicalize “ISIS brides,” the women who married ISIS fighters, both local women (Iraqi and Syrian) and foreign. Nadia accepts the recruitment, fleeing both a failed romantic relationship and a strained relationship with her family. In the course of administering (a charitable description) her program, Nadia encounters Sara, an ISIS bride also from the UK, also with Pakistani parents. Nadia of course sees in Sara a path that her life could have perhaps taken and quickly both identifies with and sympathizes with Sara. Adventures quickly proceed (no spoilers here!).

The novel is powerful for its authenticity, in several senses. Most obviously, much of the dialogue occurs in the British slang used by younger women, which I can recognize but could never reproduce. But the dialogue does effectively transport. Younis also powerfully paints a picture of those trapped between “two worlds,” a growing and much-discussed immigrant population (and their children), with roots in the “global south” but growing up in the west. Her Nadia focuses on little things like not being permitted a Christmas tree in (nominally) Anglican England. And then finally, Younis powerfully captures the culture, the deep look and feel, of the civilians who find themselves on the fringes of conflict zones, usually also with “a story.”2

A few caveats are in order. Nussaibah Younis is a friend. We’ve known each other for over a decade as Younis was for years a respected “Iraq watcher”; the small tribe of academics, think tankers, and NGO workers who monitor Iraq year after year as government officials with formal policy responsibility—military and civilian—come and go. She managed an Iraq program for the Atlantic Council (in which I was a participant) and later did work with the European Council on Foreign Relations, the European Institute of Peace and the DT Institute. She worked directly with programs on deradicalization, though of Iraqi women, not foreigners. She knows the waters in which her character is swimming. She knows that “there’s a story.”

This is undeniably a book about (mostly) women by a woman, and some may be tempted to categorize it as such. But good art is human, even if always substantiated in people who are, inevitably, male or female, with all the baggage that accompanies. In short, though your local bookstore may shelve Fundamentally as “chick lit,” it is far more than that. Nussaibah captures some very real human moments that should resonate, even if you are not female, are not a minority population in a western country, and/or have never participated in the drama of armed conflicts and development in their aftermath.

Finally, Younis both illustrates and breaks through a very, very common pathology of work in conflict zones—the tendency to see the local people as objects, rather than subjects. Her Nadia cannot help but see in Sara another person, while her colleagues see her as a problem, or eventually a solution to other problems. Nussaibah illustrates a sad truth—that dehumanization can occur in a development program, by aid workers, just as easily as in combat by soldiers (if perhaps a little less tragically). Without exempting her protagonist—Nadia does see Sara as a possible version of herself, but not all others get the same charity—Younis tells a cautionary tale about the continual temptation to “other” another human. It turns out they also have “a story.”

A fun, fast and clever read with deep insight into human nature. I can’t recommend strongly enough.