Fundamentally is one of the most talked-about debut novels of the year - a bold, unsettling and darkly funny book about extremism, identity and what we are prepared to believe. Nussaibah Younis writes from the inside of her subject with rare authority and wit, producing a novel that is at once page-turning entertainment and serious literary achievement.
 
About Fundamentally: Nadia is an academic who's been disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, Rosy. She decides to make a getaway, accepting a UN job in Iraq. Tasked with rehabilitating ISIS women, Nadia becomes mired in the opaque world of international aid, surrounded by bumbling colleagues. Sara is a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just fifteen.
 
Nadia is struck by how similar they are: both feisty and opinionated, from a Muslim background, with a shared love of Dairy Milk and rude pick-up lines. A powerful friendship forms between the two women, until a secret confession from Sara threatens everything Nadia has been working for.
 
In conversation with Bury St Edmunds Literature Festival Honorary Patron, Margaret Meyer, Nussaibah will discuss the genesis of the novel, the research that underpins it, and the personal and political questions that drove her to write it.
 
Format: Interview & Q&A
Themes: Fiction, Adults, Headliner, New Voices, LGBTQ+, Literary, Book Club
 
Nussaibah Younis Books: Fundamentally
Dr Nussaibah Younis is a peacebuilding practitioner and a globally recognised expert on contemporary Iraq. For several years, she advised the Iraqi government on proposed programs to de-radicalise women affiliated with ISIS. She studied at Oxford, Durham and Harvard Universities, and has a PhD in International Affairs. Dr Younis was a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC, where she directed the Task Force on the Future of Iraq. She has published Op-Eds in the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She was born in the UK to an Iraqi father and a Pakistani mother, and currently lives in London.
 
Margaret Meyer Books: The Witching Tide
Margaret Meyer grew up in New Zealand and has lived in the UK since 1990. She has been a journalist, editor and publisher, and was for five years the British Council’s Director of Literature. After training as a mental health therapist she worked in schools, prisons and recovery centres as well as private practice. In 2020 She completed the University of East Anglia’s prestigious MA in Creative Writing. The Witching Tide (2023), her best-selling debut novel, was inspired by the events of the East Anglian witch hunt of 1645-7 and is dedicated to the more than 100 innocent women who lost their lives. Margaret is an Honorary Patron of the Bury St Edmunds Literature Festival.