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lucysod's review against another edition
5.0
highly recommend! feeling inspired and heavy and hopeful and awed
chazzerguy's review against another edition
2.0
I guess the lesson here: A good journalist does not necessarily make a good storyteller.
The first 80-100 pages were fairly interesting... But it slowly goes downhill from there. Even though Souad Mekhennet finds herself in precarious, dangerous situations time and time again, this book is just so very... dull. I found myself speed reading the chapter in which, fearing rape, she is detained by Egyptian security. Her life flashing before her eyes as death looms... yawn. Her profiles of young adults dedicating themselves to the caliphate are monotonous. It's a shame... I think English being her fourth language shows. The writing just does not flow well. In the hands of a native speaker the storytelling could potentially be really compelling. She has certainly been in some pretty amazing situations. But this book is a slog. There are just so many characters, and it is so dense.
There is also a lot of planes, trains and automobiles. A flight here... A train there... A cab to meet an informant... On and on. And tea shops. Coffee shops. Sandwich shops. If you want to know what she got from room service while awaiting an encrypted message from a source, this might be your book.
One thing she will not let you forget: how many jihadist men are smitten with her and want to have sex with/marry her... Or how attractive she is compared to other Islamic women. Every Muslim man she encounters seems to eventually proposition her. She mentions it so many times it seems to be a little self-serving. What little she shares of her personal life seems to indicate her struggles in dating and relationships, so I wonder if those two things are related.
When I mouse-over the two star rating on GoodReads it says "It was okay" and that is exactly how I feel about this book. Not terrible by any stretch, but I just would not recommend it to too many people.
The first 80-100 pages were fairly interesting... But it slowly goes downhill from there. Even though Souad Mekhennet finds herself in precarious, dangerous situations time and time again, this book is just so very... dull. I found myself speed reading the chapter in which, fearing rape, she is detained by Egyptian security. Her life flashing before her eyes as death looms... yawn. Her profiles of young adults dedicating themselves to the caliphate are monotonous. It's a shame... I think English being her fourth language shows. The writing just does not flow well. In the hands of a native speaker the storytelling could potentially be really compelling. She has certainly been in some pretty amazing situations. But this book is a slog. There are just so many characters, and it is so dense.
There is also a lot of planes, trains and automobiles. A flight here... A train there... A cab to meet an informant... On and on. And tea shops. Coffee shops. Sandwich shops. If you want to know what she got from room service while awaiting an encrypted message from a source, this might be your book.
One thing she will not let you forget: how many jihadist men are smitten with her and want to have sex with/marry her... Or how attractive she is compared to other Islamic women. Every Muslim man she encounters seems to eventually proposition her. She mentions it so many times it seems to be a little self-serving. What little she shares of her personal life seems to indicate her struggles in dating and relationships, so I wonder if those two things are related.
When I mouse-over the two star rating on GoodReads it says "It was okay" and that is exactly how I feel about this book. Not terrible by any stretch, but I just would not recommend it to too many people.
lavoiture's review against another edition
4.0
Fascinating story about an amazing woman. I found the dialogue clunky enough to distract me, so I downgraded a star.
goneabroad71's review against another edition
4.0
I have so much respect for this reporter, and I learned a lot from this book. It’s a heavy read but worth it.
mayameow's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
tense
fast-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Torture
cpalisa's review against another edition
4.0
This was a tough one to get through, though it was a great book. In many of the chapters, I had a hard time keeping the people straight, so that got a little frustrating, but that is solely my fault. I almost felt like I should have kept notes as I went. All in all, I learned a lot and appreciated the balanced take she had on some really complicated issues.
mubeenirfan's review against another edition
4.0
We have all read a lot about how a generation of Arabs was radicalized through Soviet war fueled by money and propaganda from liberal progressive western states so that they fight on their side of the war. We have also read about how the same countries then left these mujaheddin (now terrorists) to fend for themselves who later turned on their masters. This book however talks about the new generation of terrorists, young people who are second generation European Muslims. These people do not identify themselves as Europeans because the society they have grown up in is not accepting of their diversity and has not embraced them. This young generation has since become the fodder for ISIS which is being led by Arabs but these youngsters are their foot soldiers.
The writer herself is a second generation German Muslim with Turkish & Moroccan parents and interestingly Shia and Sunni. She has talked about how she strongly wanted to be a part of the German society but felt times and again the differentiation based on her background. However, she did not went the dark way but instead started writing about the radicalization of feeble minds sparked by things she herself went through while growing up. She is now a National security correspondent for Washington Post and this book is part memoir and part background on how she broke & investigated key stories.
At times I felt that the writer has a bias against Shia. This is in part because of her reporting on Bahrain and Iraq and I am sure this Iran and Saudi Arabia game is dirty everywhere it is played but as a reader I felt she is skewing a bit when describing these conflicts. This could only be my read though. Otherwise a very good book to read on how Europe is the new hotbed of terrorism.
The writer herself is a second generation German Muslim with Turkish & Moroccan parents and interestingly Shia and Sunni. She has talked about how she strongly wanted to be a part of the German society but felt times and again the differentiation based on her background. However, she did not went the dark way but instead started writing about the radicalization of feeble minds sparked by things she herself went through while growing up. She is now a National security correspondent for Washington Post and this book is part memoir and part background on how she broke & investigated key stories.
At times I felt that the writer has a bias against Shia. This is in part because of her reporting on Bahrain and Iraq and I am sure this Iran and Saudi Arabia game is dirty everywhere it is played but as a reader I felt she is skewing a bit when describing these conflicts. This could only be my read though. Otherwise a very good book to read on how Europe is the new hotbed of terrorism.