The Last Girl

Chapter 1

Early in the summer of 2014, while I was busy preparing for my last year of high school, two farmers disappeared from their fields just outside Kocho, the small Yazidi village in northern Iraq where I was born and where, until recently, I thought I would live for the rest of my life. One moment the men were lounging peacefully in the shade of scratchy homemade tarps, and the next they were captive in a small room in a nearby village, home mostly to Sunni Arabs. Along with the farmers, the kidnappers took a hen and a handful of her chicks, which confused us. Maybe they were just hungry, we said to one another, although that did nothing to calm us down.

Kocho, for as long as I have been alive, has been a Yazidi village, settled by the nomadic farmers and shepherds who first arrived in the middle of nowhere and decided to build homes to protect their wives from the desert-like heat while they walked their sheep to better grass. They chose land that would be good for farming, but it was a risky location, on the southern edge of Iraq s Sinjar region, where most of the country s Yazidis live, and very close to non-Yazidi Iraq. When the first Yazidi families arrived in the mid-1950s, Kocho was inhabited by Sunni Arab farmers working for landlords in Mosul. But those Yazidi families had hired a lawyer to buy the land the lawyer, himself a Muslim, is still considered a hero and by the time I was born, Kocho had grown to about two hundred families, all of them Yazidi and as close as if we were one big family, which we nearly were.

The land that made us special also made us vulnerable. Yazidis have been persecuted for centuries because of our religious beliefs, and, compared to most Yazidi towns and villages, Kocho is far from Mount Sinjar, the high, narrow mountain that has sheltered us for generations. For a long time we had been pulled between the competing forces of Iraq s Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds, asked to deny our Yazidi heritage and conform to

Nadia Murad

A New York Times Editors' Choice

This devastating memoir unflinchingly recounts Murad s experiences and questions the complicity of witnesses who acquiesced in the suffering of others. The New Yorker

"Her book is sobering and an inspiration."  People

A harrowing memoir. . . . Intricate in historical context. . . . The Last Girl leaves readers with urgent, incendiary questions. The New York Times Book Review

Murad gives us a window on the atrocities that destroyed her family and nearly wiped out her vulnerable community. This is a courageous memoir that serves as an important step toward holding to account those who committed horrific crimes.   The Washington Post

This is likely the most inspiring feminist memoir out this year.   Bustle

Nadia Murad's courageous account is horrific and essential reading. . . . Anyone who wants to understand the so-called Islamic State should read The Last Girl. The Economist

"Fascinating."  Vulture

Surpassingly valuable. . . . With her new book, The Last Girl, Nadia Murad has assumed the stature of an Elie Wiesel for her people. . . . As much as it is an account of the Yazidi genocide, the book is also a loving ode to a way of life that has now been all but obliterated. Jewish Journal

A harrowing and brave book, a testament to human resilience.   The Progressive

"A devastating yet ultimately inspiring memoir that doubles as an urgent call to action. Kirkus

Brilliant and intense. . . . a clear-eyed account of ISIS s cruelty. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Powerful. . . . A heartbreaking elegy to a lost community.   Booklist