A gripping account of thirteen women who joined endured and in some cases escaped life in
the Islamic State-based on years of immersive reporting by a Pulitzer Prize finalist. FINALIST
FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Among the many books trying to understand the terrifying rise of ISIS none has given voice to
the women in the organization but women were essential to the establishment of Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi's caliphate. Responding to promises of female empowerment and social justice and
calls to aid the plight of fellow Muslims in Syria thousands of women emigrated from the
United States and Europe Russia and Central Asia from across North Africa and the rest of the
Middle East to join the Islamic State. These were the educated daughters of diplomats trainee
doctors teenagers with straight-A averages as well as working-class drifters and desolate
housewives and they joined forces to set up makeshift clinics and schools for the Islamic
homeland they'd envisioned. Guest House for Young Widows charts the different ways women were
recruited inspired or compelled to join the militants. Emma from Hamburg Sharmeena and three
high school friends from London and Nour a religious dropout from Tunis: All found rebellion
or community in political Islam and fell prey to sophisticated propaganda that promised them a
cosmopolitan adventure and a chance to forge an ideal Islamic community in which they could
live devoutly without fear of stigma or repression. It wasn't long before the militants exposed
themselves as little more than violent criminals more obsessed with power than the tenets of
Islam and the women of ISIS were stripped of any agency perpetually widowed and remarried
and ultimately trapped in a brutal lawless society. The fall of the caliphate only brought new
challenges to women no state wanted to reclaim. Azadeh Moaveni's exquisite sensitivity and
rigorous reporting make these forgotten women indelible and illuminate the turbulent politics
that set them on their paths.
