Since the fall of Bagdad, women’s voices have been largely erased, but four months after Saddam Hussein’s statue fell, a 24 year-old woman from Baghdad began blogging. In 2003, a twenty-four-year-old woman from Baghdad began blogging about life in the city under the pseudonym Riverbend. Her passion, honesty, and wry idiomatic English made her work a vital contribution to our understanding of post-war Iraq—and won her a large following. Baghdad Burning is a quotidian chronicle of Riverbend’s life with her family between April 2003 and September of 2004. She describes rolling blackouts, intermittent water access, daily explosions, gas shortages and travel restrictions. She also expresses a strong stance against the interim government, the Bush administration, and Islamic fundamentalists like Al Sadr and his followers. Her book “offers quick takes on events as they occur, from a perspective too often overlooked, ignored or suppressed” (Publishers Weekly). “Riverbend is bright and opinionated, true, but like all voices of dissent worth remembering, she provides an urgent reminder that, whichever governments we struggle under, we are all the same.” —Booklist “Feisty and learned: first-rate reading for any American who suspects that Fox News may not be telling the whole story.” —Kirkus

"Bringing these writings together for the first time, Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi provides one of the most gripping accounts of the Iraqi conflict."--Jacket.

"Riverbend, the Iraqi blogger continues her dispatches from her native Baghdad. Embedded journalism at its most compelling, her blog recounts the major events of the occupation and the insurgency since October 2004, as well as her and her family's daily struggles." "The postings include: an "open letter to Americans" before the 2004 election begging them to consider what a second Bush term will mean for Iraq; the irony of living in an oil-rich country with a desperate fuel shortage: Riverbend waits with her brother in long lines before the gas pump and then goes home to siphon out the fuel for the neighborhood generator; a description of the plight of young women in an increasingly Islamist Iraq: "The problem with defiance (not going out in public fully covered) is that it doesn't just involve you personally, it involves anyone with you at that moment - usually a male relative. It means that there might be an exchange of ugly words or a fight and probably, after that, a detention in Abu Ghraib;" and the kidnapping of Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll; with a moving tribute to Carroll's guide and translator, a well-known person in the neighborhood who was murdered on the spot by the kidnappers."--BOOK JACKET.

Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2018 This number one best-selling title in Iraq, Dubai, and the UAE is a heart-rending tale of two girls growing up in war-torn Baghdad Baghdad, 1991. The Gulf War is raging. Two girls, hiding in an air raid shelter, tell stories to keep the fear and the darkness at bay, and a deep friendship is born. But as the bombs continue to fall and friends begin to flee the country, the girls must face the fact that their lives will never be the same again. This poignant debut novel reveals just what it's like to grow up in a city that is slowly disappearing in front of your eyes, and how in the toughest times, children can build up the greatest resilience.

Inspired by true events, a graphic novel examines life on the streets of war-torn Iraq, raising questions about the meaning of liberation through the experiences of four lions who escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during a raid.