The third novel in Yasmina Khadra's bestselling trilogy about Islamic fundamentalism has the most compelling backdrop of any of his novels: Iraq in the wake of the American invasion. A young Iraqi student, unable to attend college because of the war, sees American soldiers leave a trail of humiliation and grief in his small village. Bent on revenge, he flees to the chaotic streets of Baghdad where insurgents soon realize they can make use of his anger. Eventually he is groomed for a secret terrorist mission meant to dwarf the attacks of September 11th, only to find himself struggling with moral qualms. The Sirens of Baghdad is a powerful look at the effects of violence on ordinary people, showing what can turn a decent human being into a weapon, and how the good in human nature can resist. “Compelling. . . . Khadra brings us deep into the hearts and minds of people living in unspeakable mental anguish.” —Los Angeles Times

From the internationally bestselling author of The Attack and The Swallows of Kabul, a gripping first-person narrative about one young man's involvement in France's worst terrorist attack. Khalil, a twenty-three-year-old Belgian of Moroccan descent, plans to detonate a suicide vest in a crowd outside the Stade de France on November 13, 2015. Explosions are rocking Paris, at cafés and the Bataclan theater, and when other bombs drive the stadium crowd to flee in his direction, near the Metro, his time has come. He presses his button, and . . . nothing. Fearing he has failed in his mission for Fraternel Solidarity (FS), an ISIS affiliate, Khalil has little choice but to blend in with his would-be victims and run. Back in Belgium, he must lie low and avoid his militant brethren and the authorities. He relies on his family and friends for places to stay, but he keeps the truth about himself secret. All the while, he contemplates what he almost did, and what he will do next--particularly when it comes to light that his vest accidently had been a harmless training unit all along, and FS has a new mission planned for him. In this daring, propulsive literary thriller, Yasmina Khadra takes readers to the margins of Europe's glittering capitals, through neighborhoods isolated by government neglect and popular apathy, if not outright racism. And he brings to life an unusual protagonist, a young man struggling with family, religion, and politics who makes fateful choices, and in doing so dramatizes powerful questions about society and human nature.

Bronze Medal Winner from the Military Writers Society of America! There’s a steep learning curve for every American soldier who deploys to the Middle East war zone. Much of that involves culture shock, and the excitement and confusion also applies to female soldiers. And when that female soldier is also a Military Police Officer, the curve gets bent way out of shape. Laura Colbert was heartland-bred and tough enough when the Army sent her to an MP unit in Baghdad, but she quickly discovered soldiering in Iraq involved a lot more than she expected. How to establish her military cop cred? How to deal with chauvinistic soldiers? How to deal with Iraqis—men who disrespected her and women who initially distrusted her? How much military law applied in a lawless land? And dealing with even the simplest things, like how to pee standing up. Laura managed it and survived, but the learning curve just bent in another direction when she came home from war suffering with stress and anxiety that eventually bloomed into Post-Traumatic Stress. “...Since she got back, Naylor has been on a new mission, one she believes also serves her country: She shows...what the war is really like for the soldiers who have to fight it.” —Dee J. Hall, Wisconsin State Journal “Colbert...has told her story...in the hopes of relating the reality of her war to people half a world away who experienced it only through increasingly small TV news clips and articles in print publications.” —Nathan Phelps, USA TODAY Network

Set in Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul, this extraordinary novel "puts a human face on the suffering inflicted by the Taliban" (San Francisco Chronicle), taking readers into the seemingly divergent lives of two couples—and depicting with compassion and exquisite details the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities of the Muslim world. Mohsen comes from a family of wealthy shopkeepers whom the Taliban has destroyed; Zunaira, his wife, exceedingly beautiful, was once a brilliant teacher and is now no longer allowed to leave her home without an escort or covering her face. Intersecting their world is Atiq, a prison keeper, a man who has sincerely adopted the Taliban ideology and struggles to keep his faith, and his wife, Musarrat, who once rescued Atiq and is now dying of sickness and despair. Desperate, exhausted Mohsen wanders through Kabul when he is surrounded by a crowd about to stone an adulterous woman. Numbed by the hysterical atmosphere and drawn into their rage, he too throws stones at the face of the condemned woman buried up to her waist. With this gesture the lives of all four protagonists move toward their destinies. Yasmina Khadra brings readers into the hot, dusty streets of Kabul and offers them an unflinching but compassionate insight into a society that violence and hypocrisy have brought to the edge of despair.

""Such was the battle that raged between Cousin K and me: good done badly; evil done well." So relates the unnamed narrator of Cousin K as he launches into the sad tale of his childhood. With his father brutally killed as a traitor during Algeria's war of independence and his older brother an army officer far away, the young boy lives reclusively with his mother, an unfeeling woman who ignores him entirely. At fourteen he directs his thirst for affection toward his nine-year-old cousin, K, who has come to stay with his family for the summer. But so far from reciprocating his passionate regard for her, the little girl steals the affections of his mother and mocks and humiliates him resulting in his love becoming hopelessly entangled with hatred. Now, fate places a young woman in the narrator's path when he rescues her after a violent attack. From her he once more begs for the love that his mother and K always refused him, and her rejection revives the same hatred and illuminates the permanent emotional scars left on him from a lifetime of emotional neglect and derision, resulting in dire consequences."--

Fiction. Middle Eastern Studies. Gay & Lesbian Studies. On a hot summer's day in Tehran, Farzin Rouhani leaves his house on a short walk to meet his lover. Suddenly he encounters a political demonstration and his routine is interrupted. The secret police arrest him on suspicion of conspiring to overthrow the Iranian government. Although he is completely innocent, telling the truth is not an option. Facing his interrogator, Farzin has to decide: does he want to be jailed for subversion or for revealing that he is gay? INTERRUPTIONS examines the various paths we choose when our day-to-day life is interrupted. On another level, it is also an intimate look at the interrupted psyche of a country whose dreams of freedom and justice have repeatedly been thwarted. Alemi's examination of Iranian society and its complex rituals is fresh and full of life. Continual political upheavals in a country dominated by fanatics form the backdrop--where the rich history of the Rouhani family is interwoven with the misfortunes of a nation.

Described as 'deeply affecting' by The Guardian, Yasmina Khadra provides us with a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the most complex and controversial figures of recent history in this gripping imagining of the last hours of President Gaddafi. 'Khadra’s prose is gentle and precise' The New Yorker People say I am a megalomaniac. It is not true. I am an exceptional being, providence incarnate, envied by the gods, able to make a faith of his cause. October 2011. In the dying days of the Libyan civil war, Muammar Gaddafi is hiding out in his home town of Sirte along with his closest advisors. They await a convoy that will take them south, away from encroaching rebel forces and NATO aerial attacks. The mood is sombre. In what will be his final night, Gaddafi reflects on an extraordinary life, whilst still raging against the West, his fellow Arab nations and the ingratitude of the Libyan people.