A free extract from 'the debut of the year'

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I am delighted to be sharing an extract from Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis. The novel is published next Thursday in the UK.

There’s a great deal of buzz around this book. It’s ‘the début of the year’ (Stylist), ‘one of the funniest novels of 2025’ (The Times), ‘funny, gripping and compassionate’ (Dolly Alderton), ‘essential reading’ (Jonathan Coe), ‘a brilliant novel about faith and friendship’ (Catherine Newman), ‘a Muslim Fleabag’ (Michelle Gallen), and so on.

The novel tells the story of Nadia, a British Asian academic who, fed up with the complications of her life in London - she’s broken up with her girlfriend, with the Islam of her childhood and with her puritanical mother - takes a job with the UN in Iraq.

The job is creating a de-radicalisation programme for ISIS ‘brides’. One of these is Sara, 15, originally from east London, now living in a refugee camp in her diamanté-trimmed headscarf, missing Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

‘I’ll give it to you straight,’ I said, looking her dead in the eye. ‘You’re stuck in here because people are afraid of you. Should they be?’

‘Nah, I never done nothing violent.’ She tore the head off a gummy bear and chewed its body. ‘What, you think I’m gonna shank you?’ She pointed the gummy’s head at my Kevlar vest.

‘Are you?’

‘They don’t let us have knives in here,’ she said, looking wistfully around the tent.

Neither Sara or Nadia have any intention of bonding with each other, but they do. And then… it gets complicated.