Cirrus@Austlit

'Gabrielle Lord: My 2014 novel, Dishonour, highlighted the plight of an Australian Iraqi girl, eighteenyear-old Rana, desperate to avoid a forced marriage. She fears being taken out of Australia by her brothers and forced to marry a “traditional” Muslim Iraqi cousin twice her age and live under sharia law, reduced to endless child-bearing and cooking, a second-class servant, living under the domination and sanctioned violence of her husband and his family. Rana wants to complete a pharmacy degree and marry the man of her choice, a young graduate Copt. She wants the freedoms that Australian women take for granted, but which are prohibited under sharia. I interviewed women who had left Islam. I was shocked to hear that they live in fear of their own families and communities. Then I met “Asiya”, a highly intelligent Iraqi girl in her early twenties, elegant and insightful, who spoke frankly about her own childhood and her observations of family life as a young Muslima in Sydney’s western suburbs. She feels passionately about the isolation of young girls and the forced marriages of two of her sisters, at the ages of twelve and thirteen.' (Introduction)