Interview with Nussaibah Younis, author of Fundamentally, shortlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction 2025

The Hindu

3 days ago

For a decade, Nussaibah Younis was a peacebuilding professional in Iraq. When she was asked to design a programme to deradicalise Islamic State (IS) brides, it triggered a memory from her teenage years. When she was 17, she went to a summer camp taught by the 'articulate and charming' Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, who later joined al-Qaeda and was killed in a drone strike in 2011 in Yemen. It made her realise how easily she could have been on the other side.
Leveraging her academic and personal experiences as a British-Iraqi Muslim, Younis has penned a supremely funny novel, Fundamentally (published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson), a satire on international aid bodies trying to play saviour in the face of crises. The book has been shortlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction, the winner of which will be announced on June 12. Younis takes on racism, workplace politics, religious belief, and queerness in this confident debut work. Edited excerpts from an interview:
Q: What made you fictionalise your experiences instead of writing non-fiction?
A: I wanted to write a story that would connect with a broad readership rather than be a dry academic tome. My goal was to write something with sparky characters, witty repartee, and an intense and compelling plot. A page-turner.
Fiction also puts readers in an empathetic position — they can listen to the thoughts of the protagonist, imagine themselves in her position, wonder what they would do given the same circumstances. Because the topic of IS brides is so divisive, and is often reduced to incendiary headlines in newspapers, it felt critical to me to create as much nuance as possible, which felt more achievable through fiction.
I also love to write about how the personal informs the political. Often the humour, the eroticism, and the dysfunction of real, human interactions are difficult to include in an academic work without undermining one's authority as an expert. I believe writing fiction to be more honest; it gives space for characters to be entirely human.
Q: In what ways do you think 'Fundamentally' reflects your connection with the literary figures who impacted your writing?
A: I loved studying Virginia Woolf as a part of my English literature degree at Oxford University. She was the first author I read who was considered a serious writer and a respected part of the British literary canon. She wrote accessible and enjoyable prose that combined details of the domestic life of women with insights and critiques of the broader social and political dynamics of the society in which she lived. It felt like an important counterweight to the male-dominated literary establishment. Woolf gave me the courage to see a woman's inner life as worthy of inclusion in literary work.
I enjoyed the wit, humour, and scathing self-deprecation of many of Philip Roth's characters, but often felt troubled by the latent misogyny that ran through much of his work. I wanted to write in a similar style but with a respect for the humanity of the women at the centre.
Q: Could you share your observations on the saviour complex of international aid bodies?
A: I thought to parse through this novel the challenging questions that I faced as an aid worker. What role can foreigners play in trying to 'save' countries to which they do not belong? What is the moral way to interact with countries and with people in need, and to what extent can you — or should you — impose value systems on aid recipients? What motivates us to seek to 'do good', and do our personal histories and experiences inevitably colour the work we end up doing, for good or ill? However, I don't seek to impose clear-cut answers on these questions. I wanted to provoke a thoughtful conversation about the benefits and limitations of our approach to aid. The novel also seeks to prompt nuanced reflections on the motivations of women who join extremist groups, pathways for them to leave violence behind, and the possibilities and limits of rehabilitation.
Q: Do the relationships forged by the women in the novel signal their loneliness, desires and dilemmas?
A: It remains difficult and rare for women to obtain senior positions in the field of international affairs. Many women find that they have to suppress aspects of their gender to remain competitive in the industry. The novel touches on these issues, with none of the UN women characters having had children, and many of them experiencing difficulties in finding and maintaining romantic relationships. On the other hand, the dangerous and high-stakes environment, and the insular nature of the UN base, encourages reckless and unprofessional sexual relationships between staff.
Q: Tell us more about the standup comedy class you took for this novel.
A: I fall in love with novels that make me laugh out loud; I wish there were more of them. So, I was determined to write something funny. I didn't want to elicit a mere wry smile; I wanted laughter. The best way to figure out if my material was funny was to simply tell my jokes on stage at a standup comedy course. That helped me to centre the comedy in my storytelling, and to ensure that I included moments of verified hilarity.
The interviewer is a Delhi-based queer writer and cultural critic. Instagram/X: @writerly_life