Haifa Zangana, a former political prisoner of the Ba'ath regime, presents the first comprehensive history of women in modern Iraq through the US occupation. Positioning Iraqi women today in a long line of daring and vocal activists resisting foreign aggression and despotism, Zangana traces this lineage from the emergence of a handful of turn-of-the-century poets to women's mass membership in politically affiliated women's leagues, and finally confronts the paradox of women's rising status under decades of repressive Ba'ath rule, when they were the most educated in the Arab world.

Zangana contradicts the passive role into which Western media have cast Iraqi women and presents a forceful critique of foreign women's organizations' attempts to hijack the initiatives of Iraqi women. Addressing the stark realities of Iraq today, Zangana reveals Baghdad as a "city of widows," where more than 300,000 women have been left to head households. Just as the sanctions disproportionately affected women and children, the war and occupation have destroyed their way of life. In the rebuilding of Iraq, as so often before, Zangana suggests, Iraqi women will be left to pick up the pieces of their country after yet another senseless imperial adventure.

Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi political commentator, novelist, and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein's regime. She is a weekly columnist for al-Quds newspaper and a commentator for the Guardian, Red Pepper, and al-AhramWeekly. She lives in London.

“Deftly sketched, simple and poetic, Dreaming of Baghdad drags politics down from the realm of the abstract into the mud, fear, and loneliness of personal experience and psychological ruin that is life under dictatorship. This is a landscape of clandestine struggle and crushing political defeat, of familiar old streets and the alienating structures of exile. Zangana’s story is heartbreaking, but her clarity and resilience inspire awe.”--Christian Parenti, contributing editor to The Nation

“Written with passion and commitment, Dreaming of Baghdad invoked my own dreams, and the joys and pain that memory can bring. A must-read.”--Nawal El Saadawi

“Haifa Zangana illuminates the dark realities of Saddam Hussein's Iraq while remembering what she misses from that complex place and time.”--Sharnush Parsipur

“Haifa Zangana proves once again that the act of writing can be truly liberating.”--Dalia Said Mostafa

“How poorer the world would have been without Haifa Zangana's courageous testimony. Drop anything you are reading and grab hold of a copy of this magnificent book.”--Hamid Dabashi

In 1970s Iraq, the Ba'ath Party was at the height of its influence in the Middle East and popularity throughout the West. But a group of activists recognized the disastrous potential of the regime as its charismatic leader, Saddam Hussein, became more powerful. Haifa Zangana was among those resisters, a small group of whom were captured and imprisoned at Abu Ghraib.

From the distance of time and place, Zangana writes during her first years of forced exile from her beloved country about the time of her incarceration, the agonizing loss of comrades to torture and death in prison, the haunted quality of life so far away from home and family, and the ways in which memory conspires to make us forget what sometimes is most dear to us.

Haifa Zangana was just eight years old in 1958 when Iraqis flooded the streets to celebrate their newfound, hard-won freedom from British colonial rule. She came of age in one of the most open societies in the Middle East—until it was shut down in the 1970s by the Ba'ath Party. She was imprisoned for her opposition to Saddam Hussein, and since her release has been living in exile in London. She writes regularly for the Guardian and al-Ahram Weekly, and is the author of many books, including City of Widows: An Iraqi Woman's Account of War and Resistance.

Ferial J. Ghazoul has been a professor in the department of English and comparative literature at the American University in Cairo since 1979. She is also a co-founder and editor of Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics.

"Zangana writes with indignation of the recent hijacking of her country."-Time Out New York

"This angry, unforgiving and powerful book is as vital as it is hard to swallow."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"What left me quaking was the power of internal perspective and history that she offers, and her informed explanations of both policy and practice."-Feminist Review

In City of Widows, Haifa Zangana tells the story of her country, from the early twentieth century through the US-UK invasion and the current occupation. She brings to light a sense of Iraq as a society mainly of secularists who have been denied, through years of sanctions, war, and occupation, a system within which to build the country according to their own values. She points to the long history of political activism and social participation of Iraqi women, and the fact that, before the recent invasion, they had been among the most liberated of their gender in the Middle East. Finally, she writes about Baghdad today as a city populated by bereaved women and children who have lost their loved ones and their land, but who are still emboldened by the native right to resist and liberate themselves to create an independent Iraq.

In 1958, when Haifa Zangana was just eight years old, Iraqis flooded the streets in celebration of their newfound, hard-won freedom from British colonial rule that had begun in 1917. Zangana came of age in one of the most open societies in the Middle East-until it was shut down in the 1970s by the tyrannical, yet secular, Ba'ath Party. Joining in armed struggle against Saddam Hussein, Zangana was captured, imprisoned, and tortured as a young woman. She was released from Abu Ghraib after six months of detention, and has lived in exile ever since. Today, Haifa Zangana is a novelist, a weekly columnist for Al-Quds newspaper, and a political commentator for the Guardian, Red Pepper, and Al-Ahram Weekly. She lives in London.