The Unravelling

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2015 Emma Sky was working for the British Council during the invasion of Iraq, when the ad went around calling for volunteers. Appalled at what she saw as a wrongful war, she signed up, expecting to be gone for months. Instead, her time in Iraq spanned a decade, and became a personal odyssey so unlikely that it could be a work of fiction. Quickly made civilian representative of the CPA in Kirkuk, and then political advisor to General Odierno, Sky became valued for her outspoken voice and the unique perspective she offered as an outsider. In her intimate, clear-eyed memoir of her time in Iraq, a young British woman among the men of the US military, Emma Sky provides a vivid portrait of this most controversial of interventions, exploring how and why the Iraq project failed.

Emma Sky is a Senior Fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute. She worked in the Middle East for twenty years and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services in Iraq. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.