The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad

Review by Dina Al Bayati

The Short 

In this memoir of survival from ISIS occupation in Iraq, Yazidi survivor Nadia Murad tells her harrowing and inspiring story. 

The Long 

In this intimate memoir of survival, when Nadia was 21-years-old, ISIS occupied the city of Sinjar and ethnically cleansed the Yazidis community. Nadia lost her six brothers along with her mother. She was taken to Mosul and forced among thousands of other Yazidi girls into the ISIS slave trade. Finally, she managed to escape through Mosul's streets and found shelter through a family who smuggled her to safety. Nadia Murad, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, is now a leading advocate for survivors of genocide and sexual violence.

To read or not to read? 

Read! Read! Read! Nadia Murad is among the thousands of Yazidi girls with stories of this brutal genocide. She is a witness to ISIS' brutality, a survivor, and a refugee. It is a call to action and a letter to a lost country, multiple generations of Iraqis, and the families whose homes were torn apart by war.