A powerful follow up to Rory Stewart's remarkable debut, The Places In Between, which won the Royal Society of Literature Oondatje Award and the Spirit of Scotland Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and the Scottish Book of the Year Prize.

At the age of thirty, Rory was appointed coalition deputy Governor of two provinces in the Marsh region of southern Iraq. He kept a journal of his experiences struggling to control assassinations and tribal conflict, rebuild the region's infrastructure and establish a new Iraqi government before the hand over of power in June 2004. His time in the Marsh region culminated in a terrifying siege during which he and his team were under sustained attack by insurgents. Haunted by his previous work and travels in Asia, Rory brings a unique sensitivity and perspective to the daily interactions between Iraqis and the coalition and to the perils and even comedy of foreign occupation. His luminous, sharp edged prose reveals a different Iraq to the one familiar to us from print and broadcast journalism and provides a nuanced and sympathetic picture of individuals, both Iraqi and foreign, struggling to manage the collapse of a state.