Nussaibah Younis’s award-winning novel Fundamentally (shortlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction), is one of the most talked-about debuts in recent years. 

Nadia, a young academic, has taken a UN job in Iraq, where she’s tasked with rehabilitating ISIS women. When she meets Sara, a British Asian who joined ISIS aged 15, a powerful friendship forms between the two women.  

Join Nussaibah in conversation with Lucy Caldwell to discuss her unexpectedly funny novel, exploring Middle Eastern religion, politics, friendship and sexuality. 

“One of the funniest books of the year” – i Paper 

Meet the writers

Dr Nussaibah Younis is a peacebuilding practitioner and a globally recognised expert on contemporary Iraq. For several years, she advised the Iraqi government on proposed programs to de-radicalise women affiliated with ISIS. She studied at Oxford, Durham and Harvard Universities, and has a PhD in International Affairs. Dr Younis was a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC, where she directed the Task Force on the Future of Iraq. She has published Op-Eds in the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She was born in the UK to an Iraqi father and a Pakistani mother, and currently lives in London.

Born in Belfast in 1981, Lucy Caldwell is the author of four novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and three previous collections of short stories. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, she was also the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories in 2019, and has won the E. M. Forster Award, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Walter Scott Prize among others.