Åsne Seierstad

presents

Two Sisters:
A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey into the Syrian Jihad

in conversation with MICHAEL PETROU

This event includes a book signing

Date

Apr
11
Wednesday
April 11, 2018
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning journalist and writer ÅSNE SEIERSTAD for a discussion of her latest book, Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey into the Syrian Jihad. She will be joined in conversation by award-winning journalist and foreign correspondent MICHAEL PETROU.

About Two Sisters

Two Sisters, by the internationally bestselling author Åsne Seierstad, tells the unforgettable story of a family divided by faith. Sadiq and Sara, Somali immigrants raising a family in Norway, one day discover that their teenage daughters Leila and Ayan have vanished―and are en route to Syria to aid the Islamic State. Seierstad’s riveting account traces the sisters’ journey from secular, social democratic Norway to the front lines of the war in Syria, and follows Sadiq’s harrowing attempt to find them.

Employing the same mastery of narrative suspense she brought to The Bookseller of Kabul and One of Us, Seierstad puts the problem of radicalization into painfully human terms, using instant messages and other primary sources to reconstruct a family’s crisis from the inside. Eventually, she takes us into the hellscape of the Syrian civil war, as Sadiq risks his life in pursuit of his daughters, refusing to let them disappear into the maelstrom―even after they marry ISIS fighters. Two Sisters is a relentless thriller and a feat of reporting with profound lessons about belief, extremism, and the meaning of devotion.

Praise

"Revealing and gripping . . . Seierstad’s scrupulous reporting shines a revealing new light on the phenomenon of young Westerners becoming fervent supporters of terror." —Publishers Weekly

"An unblinking, insightful journalistic account of the life of the jihadi." —Kirkus Reviews

Åsne Seierstad
Åsne Seierstad

Åsne Seierstad

Åsne Seierstad is an award-winning Norwegian journalist and writer known for her work as a war correspondent. She is the author of One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway—and Its Aftermath, The Bookseller of Kabul, One Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal, Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten War, and With Their Backs to the World: Portraits of Serbia. She lives in Oslo, Norway.

Michael Petrou
Michael Petrou

Michael Petrou

Michael Petrou is the 2018 Martin Wise Goodman Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He is a foreign correspondent who has reported from across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia, winning three National Magazine Awards. Petrou is also the recipient of the 2017 R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship, which he used to report on Syrian refugees in the Middle East. He is the author of two books, a history of Canadians in the Spanish Civil War and a memoir of reporting in the Middle East, and holds a doctorate in modern history from the University of Oxford. 

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

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