Lead Review (Fundamentally)
- Book: Fundamentally
- Location: Iraq
- Author: Nussaibah Younis
Dr Nadia Amin has taken a job based in Iraq, working for the UN on a programme of deradicalisation and rehabilitation of ISIS brides. She had until fairly recently ploughed the traditional path of a Muslim young woman, but has shed her identity, familial culture and religion, she shacked up with Rosy; she was rejected by Rosy and is now doing her best to help women, who find themselves in an impossible situation. She is a kind of kick-ass and sassy character, who is dropped in at the deep end and does her best to negotiate the entrenched and grindingly slow ways of working.
Sara is one of the first young women with whom she connects – after a sparring start – and in her, Nadia can see a mirror image of herself in her younger days, and therefore feels strongly drawn to her, wanting to help and support her in particular.
Nadia has to travel around the country as part of this job and she comes across all kinds of people working to try and resolve the situation. Can these women be repatriated? The author’s tongue-in-cheek storytelling comes through loud and clear, adding wry humour, which serves to counter the severity of the women’s situation. Characters, like bumbling Sheik Jason (his teachings made her long for the coherence of fundamentalist Islam, she says) and Pierre the Frenchman add colour to the project but not necessarily competence. She writes with wit and acuity as she describes Nadia’s experiences, including flashbacks to her relationship with Rosy, and encounters with her mother, who essentially feels that Nadia has failed in life by neither becoming a devout Muslim wife, nor, for example, owning a Mercedes S-class G-Tronic with a V6 engine.
It is, of course, a difficult subject but the author shrewdly feeds in reference points, like the difference between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims, and she doesn’t mince her words when delving into the nature radicalisation, saying “…there are Tory MPs who are more radical than this lot…” . This debut is written with bounce and energy, with crude language at times that might offend some.The author creates a storyline which, I imagine, is aimed at readers of a similar age to Nadia. For me, as a more mature reader, it didn’t have quite the level of depth and characterisation I would ideally like to see in a novel. It does have quite a lot going for it and certainly skilfully rides the precarious knife edge of melding a quirky story with a complex political issue.
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