Love in a Torn Land

Bestselling author Jean Sassoon tells the dramatic true story of a young woman who fell victim to Saddam Hussein's genocide of the Kurdish people in Iraq. One morning, Joanna, a young bride living in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, was startled by the sight of dead birds falling silently from a clear sky. Sinister bombs followed, bringing terror and death to the earth. It was 1987, and Saddam Hussein ordered his cousin, "Chemical Ali," to bomb Joanna's village, Bergalo, with chemical weapons. Temporarily blinded in the attack, Joanna was rescued by her husband, a Kurdish freedom fighter. After being caught in another bombing and left to die in the rubble, they managed to escape across the mountains in a harrowing survival. Now living in the UK and working for British Airways, Joanna recounted her eventful life story to Jean Sassoon, the bestselling chronicler of persecuted women in her Princess trilogy and Mayada. Love in a Shattered Land was published as the world watched the trial of the infamous "Chemical Ali," Saddam Hussein's most bloodthirsty henchman, for crimes including the genocide of the Kurdish people.