Shahad Al-Rawi

An Iraqi anthropologist and novelist, Shahad Al-Rawi represents the vanguard of a new generation of writers who seamlessly weave magical realism with the traumatic realities of war. She became the youngest female author to be shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and won the First Book Award at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (2018) for her debut, The Baghdad Clock (Sa’at Baghdad); her style is celebrated for its dreamlike flow of consciousness, utilizing the limitless imagination of childhood to navigate and survive the devastating bombardment and subsequent embargoes of 1990s Iraq.