Longlist
Beyond the Wall East Germany, 1949-1990
Katja Hoyer
Baghdad Burning
Riverbend (Pseudonym)
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.
- First published:
- 2005
- Published by:
- Feminist Press at the City University of New York
- Length:
- Hardcover 286 pages
About the author
Riverbend is the pseudonym of a woman who in 2003 began writing a blog relating her first hand experiences of the US invasion and then occupation of her native Iraq. Once a computer programmer in a modern, secular state, Riverbend discusses with honesty and acute political awareness the changes that resulted in the rise of religious fundamentalism.
