Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad

Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad

"This is a wonderful story of a slow burning deepening friendship between two intelligent compassionate and funny women across a huge divide" Kirsty Wark, Newsnight

Would you brave gun-toting militias for a cut and blow dry?

May's a tough-talking, hard-smoking, lecturer in English. She's also an Iraqi from a Sunni-Shi'ite background living in Baghdad, dodging bullets before breakfast, bargaining for high heels in bombed-out bazaars and battling through blockades to reach her class of Jane Austen-studying girls.

Bee, on the other hand, is a London mum of three, busy fighting off PTA meetings and chicken pox, dealing with dead cats and generally juggling work and family while squabbling with her globe-trotting husband over the socks he leaves lying around the house.

They should have nothing in common. But when a simple email brings them together, they discover a friendship that overcomes all their differences of culture, religion and age. Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad is the story of two women who share laughter and tears, and swap their confidences, dreams and fears. And, between the grenades, the gossip, the jokes and the secrets, they also hatch an ingenious plan to help May escape the bombings of Baghdad . . .

Bee Rowlatt is a former showgirl turned BBC World Service journalist. A mother of three and wood-be do-gooder, she can find keeping her career going while caring for her three daughter (and husband) pretty tough, even in leafy north London.

May Witwit is an Iraqi expect in Chaucer and sender of emails depicting kittens in fancy dress. She is prepared to face every hazard imaginable to make that all-important hairdresser's appointment.

Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad
Penguin Australia
Author: Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit
ISBN: 9780141038537
Price: $22.95