A novel by a Kurdish-Iraqi writer that gives voice to contemporary Iraqi women's experiences of political repression, violence, exile, and the yearning for peace. It represents a critique of the violence done to ordinary people by those who hold power both in Iraq and in the West.
The carefully crafted, subtle, and humorous stories in Packaged Lives show Zangana at her best as a fiction writer. She portrays her subjects keenly, sensitively, and lovingly but without compromise. Iraqis living in exile come to life in her narratives as men and women who are caught between two worlds.