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Summary
"I was told to come alone. I was not to carry any identification, and would have to leave my cell phone, audio recorder, watch, and purse at my hotel. . . ."
For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter for The Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing - Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other.
In this compelling and evocative memoir, we accompany Mekhennet as she journeys behind the lines of jihad, starting in the German neighborhoods where the 9/11 plotters were radicalized and the Iraqi neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shia turned against one another, and culminating on the Turkish/Syrian border region where ISIS is a daily presence. In her travels across the Middle East and North Africa, she documents her chilling run-ins with various intelligence services and shows why the ArabSpring never lived up to its promise. She then returns to Europe, first in London, where she uncovers the identity of the notorious ISIS executioner "Jihadi John," and then in France, Belgium, and her native Germany, where terror has come to the heart of Western civilization.
Mekhennet's background has given her unique access to some of the world's most wanted men, who generally refuse to speak to Western journalists. She is not afraid to face personal danger to reach out to individuals in the inner circles of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates; when she is told to come alone to an interview, she never knows what awaits at her destination.
Souad Mekhennet is an ideal guide to introduce us to the human beings behind the ominous headlines, as she shares her transformative journey with us. Hers is a story you will not soon forget.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Actor Potter stands in for but doesn't adequately capture the voice of the author in reading the audio edition of Mekhennet's memoir. As a journalist, Mekhennet first shot to fame in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, when her talent, drive, and Muslim identity granted her unprecedented access to terrorist cells and war zones throughout the world. Raised in Germany by immigrant parents from Morocco and Turkey, Mekhennet's unusually cosmopolitan background helped her to see multiple sides of the stories she has covered for Western outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR. Potter doesn't quite have those cosmopolitan chops, however. As a narrator she is competent, but she sounds thoroughly American here, and is therefore not quite believable as a globe-trotting German reporter. If the listener can get past that miscasting, though, other advantages of Potter's narration, like her emotional sensitivity, become evident. She also captures Mekhennet's unexpected moments of humor in an otherwise serious book, like when she recovers her confiscated Kindle after being interrogated in Egypt and discovers that her captors apparently read to the end of a self-help book for single women. Still, the difference between the author's background and the narrator's is apparent throughout. A Holt hardcover. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An unsettling firsthand report on the motivations of jihadis.A Muslim raised in Germany, Washington Post national security correspondent Mekhennet (co-author: The Eternal Nazi: From Mauthausen to Cairo, the Relentless Pursuit of SS Doctor Aribert Heim, 2014, etc.) was inspired by the movie All the President's Men to become an investigative journalist: "I could see that journalists didn't simply write what happened; what they wrote could change lives." Her first contribution to the American press came in September 2002, in a piece for the Post on "Hamburg's Cauldron of Terror." At the trial of the first man accused of being an accessory to the 9/11 attacks, she met the widow of a New York firefighter who blamed the American government and news media for keeping citizens ignorant of hatred against the West. Based on copious interviews with members of jihadi groups, torture victims, families of men drawn into terrorism, refugees, and desperate citizens, Mekhennet helps to remedy that ignorance by exposing the sources of rage. In addition to on-site research in the Middle East and Europe, where she traveled on assignment for major news outlets, she spent a year as a Nieman Fellow researching long-term strategies of terrorist organizations. She is as frustrated with the West's insistence that all Muslins are terrorists as she is with the horrific image of the West held by indoctrinated jihadi militants, who watch videos of atrocities carried out by Western-backed regimes as part of the recruitment process. Some militants feel alienated from cultures that treat them like outsiders; others join a struggle of Shia against Sunni. Mekhennet is also frustrated by the Western media's glossing over reality: she wonders, for example, why the uprisings known as the Arab Spring were not shown to be "turning formerly stable countries into security threats" roiled by sectarian rift. The author sees "a clash between those who want to build bridges and those who would rather see the world in polarities" and to spread hatred. Little in this distressing, revealing book portends hope for bridge building, but Mekhennet provides an eye-opening picture. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* A riveting memoir and a literary bombshell that effectively eviscerates every preconception, misconception, and prejudice readers have about the Arab world, I Was Told to Come Alone reinforces the singular significance of journalism, especially foreign journalism, at a time when it is facing its greatest challenges. Over the course of her career, Mekhennet has written for such outlets as the New York Times and Der Spiegel and is currently a national security correspondent for the Washington Post. Born a German Muslim of Moroccan and Turkish descent, she has faced a litany of personal and professional challenges while covering conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, but she has let nothing, from gun-toting jihadists in lawless locales to arrest by brutal Egyptian authorities, keep her from running down a story. In fearless prose that reveals bracing truths, Mekhennet demands that readers travel with her into the heart of old battles and new wars as she pushes past what we want to hear to reveal the complicated realities at the heart of how organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS continue to thrive. Compelling, insightful, and shockingly relevant, Mekhennet's chronicle is a must-read and nothing less than a revelation.--Mondor, Colleen Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE, by Gail Honeyman. (Penguin, $16.) Eleanor, the socially awkward, terrifically blunt heroine of this quirky novel, is a loner, spending her weekends alone with vodka and frozen pizzas. But a blossoming romance with her office's I.T. specialist, Raymond, and their friendship with an elderly man help stave off isolation, opening them all up to the redemptive power of love. THE FACT OF A BODY: A Murder and a Memoir, by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. (Flatiron, $17.99.) The author's work as an intern at the firm that defended an accused murderer and pedophile compels her to re-examine her own past abuse. She devotes herself to finding parallels between her molestation by her grandfather and the firm's client, and indicts what she sees as society's refusal to acknowledge wicked acts. MADE FOR LOVE, by Alissa Nutting. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $15.99.) After Hazel's husband - a wealthy, manipulative tech visionary - implants a chip into her brain, she leaves him, showing up at her father's senior living community to stay with him and his sex doll. As our reviewer, Merritt Tierce, put it, the novel "crackles and satisfies by all its own weird rules, subversively inventing delight where none should exist." THE OUTER BEACH: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod's Atlantic Shore, by Robert Finch. (Norton, $16.95.) Finch, a nature writer, shares 50 years of observations from a stretch of shoreline. The book, arranged chronologically from 1962 to 2016, devotes a chapter to each place up the shore; our reviewer, Fen Montaigne, wrote that "Finch artfully conveys what is, at heart, so stirring about the beach: how its beauty and magisterial power cause us to ponder the larger things in life and drive home our place in the universe." OUT IN THE OPEN, by Jesús Carrasco. Translated by Margaret Juli Costa. (Riverhead, $16.) In this bleak, dystopic debut novel, a young boy flees his tormentors and family's betrayal into a parched, unnamed land. When he is joined by an old goatherd, the pair recalls Don Quixote as they make their way through a merciless world, trying to evade cruelty. Faced with suffering, the novel asks, will we respond with grace? I WAS TOLD TO COME ALONE: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad, by Souad Mekhennet. (St. Martin's Griffin/Henry Holt, $17.99.) As a Muslim of Moroccan descent raised in Germany, Mekhennet, a Washington Post reporter, has been able to access inner circles of Islamic militants. Her book takes readers into the world of jihadi recruiters and their targets, and assesses the risk the West faces.
Library Journal Review
In her latest book, Washington Post national security correspondent Mekhennet chronicles her life and career. With a strong analytical voice, the author describes growing up as a first-generation German experiencing xenophobia and as a Muslim confronting the world's fear of radical Islam. She faced many hurdles pursuing her profession, but she persisted because she believes that journalists have the power to change lives. The ground she has covered, both literally as a reporter visiting terrorist camps in the Middle East and figuratively through her work, provides a near-complete look at modern terrorism starting before 9/11 and culminating with her discovering the identity of and meeting with the infamous Jihadi John. The heartbreaking topics of her news stories occasionally touched her personal life: a relative of a friend, radicalized, had to be brought back from Syria for a family intervention; a cousin's son fell victim to a mass shooting in Europe. The thrilling narrative brings up critical, persuasive insights while trying to answer the questions of where terrorism comes from and why it's so difficult to eradicate. VERDICT For readers who are interested in modern politics, the Middle East, journalism, or strong female voices. [See Prepub Alert, 12/19/16.]-Heidi Uphoff, Sandia National Laboratories, NM © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.