Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, who was enslaved by ISIS as a young girl and went on to became one of the world’s most recognizable activists, will tell the story of her life in a new memoir.
Summit Books will publish Murad’s I Choose My Beginning: A Story of Courage and Activism, co-written with Jenna Krajeski and featuring a foreword by pioneering feminist Gloria Steinem, in the fall. With the book, the press says, Murad “reclaims her extraordinary journey from the embers of devastation to a fight for freedom—and for what comes next when a young girl’s flame cannot be extinguished.”
Murad was born in Kocho, Iraq, in 1993 and was abducted by the Islamic State in 2014 during the militant group’s genocidal campaign against the Yazidi people. She was held as a sex slave by the group for three months before escaping to a refugee camp in the Kurdistan region.
She became an activist, founding the nonprofit group Nadia’s Initiative, which advocates for survivors of mass atrocities. In 2018, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Denis Mukwege, a Congolese physician who specializes in treating rape survivors.
Murad published a previous memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, in 2017. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a devastating yet ultimately inspiring memoir that doubles as an urgent call to action.”
“Powerful and deeply inspiring, I Choose My Beginning is the story of an extraordinary woman reclaiming her humanity—and showing that survival is not the end of the story. It is the beginning,” Summit says.
I Choose My Beginning is slated for publication on Sept. 15.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
