The Last Girl: My story of captivity and my fight against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad

 ‘…Nadia refused to be silenced. She has defied all the labels that life has given her: Orphan. Rape victim. Slave. Refugee. She has instead created new ones: Survivor. Yazidi leader. Women’s advocate. Nobel Peace Prize nominee. United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, and now author. 

Amal Clooney
Barrister


This biography paints a very clear picture of what life is like for a young woman living in a country taken over by ISIS. If you are like me and find news coverage of war in the Middle East overwhelming, books like The Last Girl make the history and situation very real.

Nadia Murad lived a quiet and rewarding life in Iraq, as a member of the close-knot Yazidi community. Her large family was loving and supportive and she dreamed of becoming a teacher or owning a beauty salon. Until the day ISIS came to her village. Every person was herded in the school. Young men were forced to lift their arms up and those without armpit hair were taken away to be used as suicide bombers or become fighters. Older men were taken outside and shot if they did not convert to Islam (which none did); this included Nadia’s six brothers.

Older women such as Nadia’s mother were also shot and swept into mass graves. Nadia was taken away and forced, along with thousands of other Yazidi girls into the ISIS slave trade.

If this all sounds too much to bear, the foreword by human rights lawyer Amal Clooney (married to some guy you may have heard of called George), provides some hope. When Nadia finally escapes from ISIS they together bring the case for justice against ISIS to the United Nations Security Council and win; and a landmark resolution was adopted to create an investigation team to collect evidence to begin war crimes and genocide charges.

I will leave the last word to Nadia:

‘More than anything else, I want to be the last girl in the world with a story like mine.’

Reviewed by Katrina

Catalogue link: The Last Girl