Heather Raffo

The actress describes the book — she also wrote her play — as “A portrait of the extraordinary (and ordinary) lives of a whole cross-section of Iraqi women,” this enthralling work delves into the “many conflicting aspects of what it means to be a woman in the age-old war zone that is Iraq” — part of which is ambivalence to the American presence. An unusually timely meditation on the ancient, the modern and the feminine in a country overshadowed by war.

The overlapping conversations lead to “a breakdown in communications as the chaos of Iraq intensified,” nothing new in its ancient, and modern, history. Heather Raffo’s monologues weave the voices into “a finely textured, brilliantly colorful tapestry of feminine longing in dire times.” Charles Isherwood writes in The New York Times: “The voices are a study in contrasts: vivid and subdued, sophisticated and naive, seductive and standoffish. But they cohere to form a powerful collective portrait of suffering and endurance…”

Heather Raffo.