Return to Ruin

"Writing exiled and diasporic Iraqis into the imperial history of the United States, Zainab Saleh exposes the long-term effects of American action on sovereignty and nation-building attempts in Iraq. Powerful and heartbreaking, Return to Ruin is a must-read for all who are interested in the fraught relationships between colonial durability and political action."—Deborah A. Thomas, University of Pennsylvania

"In this outstanding book, we encounter the poignant life stories of Iraqis, stories too often reduced to statistics and stereotypes when they are visible at all. If Iraq is an open wound, as one of the interlocutors in this book says, these narratives sketch the wound's history and its visceral depth. Return to Ruin is an illuminating study of Iraqi diasporic subjectivities."—Sinan Antoon, author of The Book of Collateral Damage

"[Saleh] effectively does justice to each story's nuances and contradictions while also using the stories as springboards to discussing Iraqi history, politicization, and diasporic experiences in depth... While many scholars of the Middle East know basic facts about Iraq, learning from Iraqis themselves is both illuminating and tragic. As an American, Return to Ruin was necessary reading, highlighting how my own imperial subjectivity is inextricably intertwined with theirs."—Neha Vora, International Journal of Middle East Studies