This is the story of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniac leader who shaped the state in his own image. Then one day, after yet another war, a foreign army invaded, toppled the leader, destroyed the state, and proceeded to invent a new country. This is the story of a people who watched with horror as their world fragmented into a hundred different cities, as walls rose between them and bodies piled in the streets. From the American invasion to the Arab Spring, ISIS and beyond, ‘A Stranger in Your Own City’ offers a remarkable de-centring of the West in the history and contemporary situation of the region.