6th November 2023
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On the 17th of October I went to the annual Liverpool literary festival, where I attended a talk given by Nussabiah Younis. Younis’s debut novel Fundamentally is a recount of her own experiences in working for the UN in Iraq to de-radicalise ISIS brides. Whilst this sounds like a serious and heavy topic, which it undoubtedly is, the humour threaded throughout is genuinely laugh out loud and absurdist. Younis took stand-up comedy classes before she wrote the book, to find out what makes people genuinely laugh, and boy did she succeed.
Whilst I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but read out passages to my housemate that I found to be hilariously funny, most notably when the protagonist Nadia wonders if sitting on a man’s face would work to shut him up. Every few pages I sputtered with laughter and Nussaibah’s audacity. I found myself very intrigued to find out how she was in person, and how similar she was to her main character Nadia.
Nussaibah, like her character Nadia, moved to Iraq to work for the UN in de-radicalising ISIS brides. Drawing inspiration from shows such as ‘The Thick of it’ and ‘Yes Minister’, Nussaibah satirises the political institution of the UN making it more accessible to readers to understand how it works. Nussaibah jokingly claimed that, she learnt more about how political institutions worked from these shows, then from her years of studying and then teaching international politics. In pitching her book to an editor, she claimed it was ‘Fleabag meets Evelyn Waugh.’
Whilst humour is a significant part of this book, she is very good at removing herself from the serious topics in order to let them breathe, and for the impact to hit home.
When asked how similar she was to the main character Nadia, Younis said they were quite similar. Particularly with the strained relationship with her mother and complicated feelings about religion. Until her 20s Younis was a conservative practicing Muslim, then went in the opposite direction and embraced sexual freedom. The characters of Sara (a young ISIS bride from South London) and Nadia, in discussing their two different viewpoints on being Muslim, are arguably the two sides of Younis’ own internal argument and thoughts around religion. She wanted to give a non-judgemental space to the conservative Muslim perspective, that of which has never been done before in a literary sense.
When asked about the current state of the middle east and our governments response to it, Younis grew quiet and paused for a moment. The 20 years of good work that seemed to be happening before 2023, seems reversed by the Gaza genocide. It has been shattering she further said, to see the news coverage of this mass genocide and hear the Labour government neglect to help. This she argues is further pushing young Muslim teenagers towards radicalism, as there is a dissonance between themselves and the government, leading to a lack of trust. The head in the sand approach, of rejecting any responsibility for the impact our country has had on the middle east over the decades, is harming more than solving. What problem has ever disappeared from ignoring it? When asked what she thought the government could do to rectify this she said, “call out Israel actions and stop supporting their violence”, seemingly a simple enough action, and moralistic, but one the government hasn’t been able to do.
Younis said she was glad that no one came up to her 15-year-old self, angry at the west’s treatment of the middle east, and offered her an extreme solution. Sara is the flip side of this. A young Muslim girl fed up with the lack of human compassion shown to the middle east and as Younis states having a somewhat ‘brown saviour complex’,
Ending on this rather heavy, point Nussaibah pauses and pivots this moment into one of levity promising that ‘the book really is funny.’ Well, I’m here to say she is right and if you’re looking for a comedic book that will also make you think, why not try Fundamentally?
To read the rest of our reviews of the Liverpool Literary Festival, please click here:
https://www.liverpoolguildstudentmedia.co.uk/category/arts-culture
