Anglo-American psychiatrist Mona Haddad receives an unexpected visit from an old acquaintance who knew Mona's mother. To Mona, her mother Diane is " the liar who spat out the truth, the avenging angel of Baghdad." Diane was  an Englishwoman who married an Iraqi doctor and spent decades in Baghdad. Her mother's story inevitably entwines with her own, and with the larger picture of the British in Iraq.  An atmospheric and lyrical novel that illuminates history as it's lived.

Elizabeth Loudon holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MA in English from Cambridge University, and has taught at Smith, Amherst, and Williams Colleges. She’s published fiction and memoir in the Denver Quarterly, INTRO, North American Review, and Gettysburg Review, among others, and received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She drew on her experiences traveling in Iraq and Lebanon in the 1970s  hen writing A Stranger in Baghdad, her first novel.  A former resident of the Valley, she now lives in London.