Judit Neurink

When journalist Anna in Amsterdam marries the Iraqi photographer Karim, she cannot suspect how many secrets he hides, and how they will affect her life. Nor does she know that meeting her Iranian colleague Davoud in Tehran will lead to many more of those, as well as to the question: who is the father of her daughter Zina?

Which is the role of women in a radical Muslim group like ISIS? Did women fight and kill, in the state ISIS ran in Iraq and Syria? What happened to the women that ISIS kidnapped? How was life in general for women in the group’s caliphate? Do you want to understand better what is the relation between radical Islam and women? How it is possible, that women were joining ISIS by the thousands from abroad? That active western women agreed to a life at home, just as wives and mothers? Then you need to read this book by acclaimed Dutch author and journalist Judit Neurink, who lived in Iraq for over ten years and reported on the arrival and departure of the ISIS regime for media in Holland and Belgium. Slaves wives and brides shows the complex relationship between women and radical Islam. In the book, Neurink gives a voice to Yazidi women who escaped from the caliphate. She tells the story of the American add worker Kayla Mueller, who was the slave of ISIS-leader Al-Baghdadi. She paints a clear picture of daily life under ISIS rule for women in cities like Mosul and Raqqa. With ISIS mostly defeated in Iraq and Syria, this book is a completely updated and edited version of Neurink’s sixth book The Women of the Caliphate.

A Jewish girl suffers from anti-Semitic sentiments in the Iraq of the past century. A Kurdish girl finds her diary over sixty years later. What connects them? Rahila grows up under the growing anti-Semitic threats of the 1940’s and loses her family and most people around her to the pull of Zionism and the state of Israel. She herself marries a Muslim, converts to Islam and stays in Iraq. Zara is part of the Arab Spring movement in Kurdistan and struggles to come to terms with her new-found, Jewish roots. She finds she is not the only one whose long forgotten past is looming heavily over her present and future. Two women, living in two different eras, play the main parts in Judit Neurink’s novel situated in Iraq. Neurink, who lived in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq for over ten years, brings to life the past Iraq has chosen to forget, of the Jews who for centuries made up the fabric of the society. Using the stories of two strong women, she draws the pictures of Iraqi, Kurdish and Jewish families struggling to survive in a changing and often hostile world. The Jewish Bride covers a chapter in Iraq’s history that is absent in what is taught in Iraqi schools and universities. While Jewish buildings and quarters have crumbled and all but disappeared, the knowledge about how Jews, Muslims and Christians used to live together in Iraq seems doomed to perish with the older generation. By telling these stories and mixing them with fiction, Neurink has made this lost past come alive again. The Jewish Bride is a powerful story that will touch and move readers from all over the world.

Dutch journalist Judit Neurink arrived in Iraq in 2008 to set up a training center for journalists. She reported as a correspondent on the development in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the rise and fall of the Islamic terror group ISIS and the kidnapping and murder of thousands of Yazidis. She witnessed the division of Iraq on the basis of ethnicity and religion and heard the ever louder call for a strong leader. For her, it all led to a strong connection to the country. More so, when with the protests by young Iraqis against the corruption, lawlessness and violence, aroused new hope. At the same time, a vengeful ISIS reappeared as a threat – as the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had no effect. Neurink came to help in rebuilding Iraq, but more and more had to report on tensions and violence. She could not remain immune from the suffering, and that eventually led to her leaving. In “Violence Recycled” she looks back at a tumultuous decade, and shows the reader the cultural diversity, deeply rooted conflicts and highs and lows of a country that she came to love, but for which a peaceful future seems an almost impossible dream. Judit Neurink (1957) is a journalist and writer. She writes for Dutch, Belgian and international media and published “The War of ISIS, Slaves Wives and Brides” and the novel “The Jewish Bride”.