Fitzcarraldo signs 'unvarnished chronicle' of Yemeni civil war

Fitzcarraldo Editions has landed What Have You Left Behind? a "powerful and devastating exposition" of the Yemeni civil war by writer and journalist Bushra al-Maqtari, translated by Sawad Hussain.

Associate publisher Tamara Sampey-Jawad acquired world English rights to the book from Nina Sillem. Publication is scheduled for September 2022.

In 2015, a year after it started, al-Maqtari decided to document the suffering of civilians in the Yemeni civil war, which has killed more than 200,000 people according to the UN. Inspired by the work of Svetlana Alexievich, she spent two years visiting different parts of the country, putting her life at risk by speaking with her compatriots, and gathered over 400 testimonies, a selection of which appear in the book. 

"Purposefully alternating between accounts from the victims of the Houthi rebels and those of the Saudi-led coalition, al-Maqtari highlights the disillusionment and anguish felt by civilians trapped in a war outside of their own making," the synopsis explains. "This desire for objectivity – to tell the stories of the civilians, unencumbered by political motivations – made it difficult for her to find a publisher for her book". It was eventually published by Riad El-Rayyes Books, a press based in Beirut. 

Sampey-Jawad said: "From children who pop to the shops never to return, to the loss of entire families whose houses are razed to the ground, What Have You Have Left Behind? is a powerful and devastating exposition of the cruel randomness of war. 

"As difficult to read as it is to put down, Bushra al-Maqtari’s unvarnished chronicle of the conflict in Yemen serves as a vital reminder of the scale of the human tragedy behind the headlines, and offers a searing condemnation of the international community’s complicity in the war’s continuation, and I am delighted to be welcoming her to Fitzcarraldo Editions."

Al-Maqtari lives in Sanaa, Yemen. Her writings have appeared in various Arabic and international newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times. In 2013, she received the Françoise Giroud Award for Defence of Freedom and Liberties in Paris as well as the Leaders for Democracy Prize awarded by the Project on Middle East Democracy in Washington. In 2020, she was awarded the Johann-Philipp-Palm-Award for Freedom of Speech and Press, following on from the publication of What Have You Left Behind? with Ullstein Verlag in Germany.