Dunya Mikhail will speak about and sign her new book, The Beekeeper, on Sunday, September 16th at the Brooklyn Book Festival.

About the book:

Since 2014, Daesh (ISIS) has been brutalizing the Yazidi people of northern Iraq: sowing destruction, killing those who won’t convert to Islam, and enslaving young girls and women.

The Beekeeper, by the acclaimed poet and journalist Dunya Mikhail, tells the harrowing stories of several women who managed to escape the clutches of Daesh. Mikhail extensively interviews these women—who’ve lost their families and loved ones, who’ve been repeatedly sold, raped, psychologi- cally tortured, and forced to manufacture chemical weapons—and as their tales unfold, an unlikely hero emerges: a beekeeper, who uses his knowledge of the local terrain, along with a wide network of transporters, helpers, and former cigarette smugglers, to bring these women, one by one, through the war-torn landscapes of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, back into safety.

In the face of inhuman suffering, this powerful work of nonfiction offers a counterpoint to Daesh’s genocidal extremism: hope, as ordinary people risk their lives to save those of others.

About the panel:

Detained. In Wrestling with the Devil, Ngugi wa Thiong’o emerges from a Kenyan prison in 1978 with a novel written on toilet paper. In Dunya Mikhail’s The Beekeeper, Iraqi women abducted by ISIS are ultimately rescued. While in Helon Habila’s The Chibok Girls, Nigerian students kidnapped by Boko Haram manage to escape and find their way home. These urgent works of nonfiction speak of confinement, enslavement, and torture yet offer voices of resilience that demand to be heard. Moderated by Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, Pen American Center.