From the bestselling author of Lawrence in Arabia, a piercing
account of how the contemporary Arab world came to be riven by
catastrophe since the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq.
In 2011, a series of anti-government uprisings shook the Middle East and
North Africa in what would become known as the Arab Spring. Few could
predict that these convulsions, initially hailed in the West as a
triumph of democracy, would give way to brutal civil war, the terrors of
the Islamic State, and a global refugee crisis. But, as New York Times
bestselling author Scott Anderson shows, the seeds of catastrophe had
been sown long before. In this gripping account, Anderson examines the
myriad complex causes of the region's profound unraveling, tracing the
ideological conflicts of the present to their origins in the United
States invasion of Iraq in 2003 and beyond. From this investigation
emerges a rare view into a land in upheaval through the eyes of six
individuals--the matriarch of a dissident Egyptian family; a Libyan Air
Force cadet with divided loyalties; a Kurdish physician from a prominent
warrior clan; a Syrian university student caught in civil war; an Iraqi
activist for women's rights; and an Iraqi day laborer-turned-ISIS
fighter. A probing and insightful work of reportage, Fractured Lands
offers a penetrating portrait of the contemporary Arab world and brings
the stunning realities of an unprecedented geopolitical tragedy into
crystalline focus.
