Seven Dials acquires volunteer's memoir of battling ISIS

Seven Dials has acquired the "explosive" story an ordinary man who went to Syria as an international volunteer to fight alongside the Kurdish YPG against ISIS.

Anna Valentine, executive publisher of the Orion Publishing Group, picked up UK and Commonwealth rights in Macer Gifford's Fighting Evil: The Ordinary Man Who Went to War Against ISIS from Piers Blofeld at Sheil Land. The book will be published on 28th May 2020.

Gifford, formerly a foreign exchange trader, left his job in the City, his family and his girlfriend to join the Kurdish YPB in their fight against ISIS in 2015. For the next three years, according to Orion, he "fought alongside the ill-equipped but battle-hardened Kurds and their Syrian allies to become one of the longest serving British International Volunteers, and one of only a few to be promoted to a commander in the YPG". And, along the way, he "encountered fierce firefights, lethal snipers and suicide bombers, and a motley but remarkable band of foreign volunteers who valiantly stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight against evil".

Valentine said: "Macer’s story is explosive, in more ways than one, and an amazing tribute to all those who laid down their lives in the fight against ISIS. It’s an honour to be publishing it on the Seven Dials list."

Gifford became one of the most well-known international volunteers battling ISIS, garnering 45,000 online followers while writing for publications and appearing on radio channels worldwide.

He said: "When the history of the rise and fall of the Islamic State is written, chapters will be dedicated to the tens of thousands of foreign fanatics that went to Syria to butcher and kill.

"I hope that a single page in the history of this war will be dedicated to the hundreds of international volunteers that fought and died alongside the people of Syria in their hour of need. This book is my own contribution to this amazing story."