Noga Efrati's book is a most welcome addition to a number of recent studies of politics and society in Iraq under the mandate and monarchy that have demonstrated the richness of political and social life during that period.
Peter Sluglett, University of Utah, author of Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country Looking at the past through the lens ... Read moreof the present and the present through the lens of the past, Noga Efrati effectively shows how under Western rule Iraqi women's rights became a victim not once but twice, in eerily similar circumstances. In the first half of the twentieth century, the British occupation and Hashemite monarchy it spawned used tribal and family law to make women second-class citizens, disenfranchising them in the process. Women's activists fought for their rights, Efrati tells us, just as those in American-occupied Iraq in the early twenty-first century fought for theirs, opposing political marginalization, retribalization, and communalization of family law. For anyone trying to understand the contradictions and casualties of occupation, Women in Iraq is a must-read.
Beth Baron, City University of New York Efrati's book is a remarkable study that deserves much praise.
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