Born with cerebral palsy, 16-year-old Nujeen Mustafa has spent her life in a wheelchair. She had little formal education in Syria but taught herself English by watching US soap operas. In 2014 her home town of Kobane was at the centre of fierce fighting between Isis militants and US-backed Kurdish forces, forcing her family to flee first across the border into Turkey and then further into Europe, where they currently live, in Germany.
Christina Lamb is a multi award-winning journalist for the Sunday Times. She has acted as Washington Bureau Chief for the paper and in 2009 she was awarded the prestigious Prix Bayeux Calvados for her reporting from Afghanistan. She won the Foreign Press Association Award for Story of the Year in 2007, and was also named Foreign Correspondent of the Year in the British Press Awards and the BBC What the Papers Say Awards, having previously won both awards in 2002. The same year, she won the Foreign Press Association Award for her reporting on the war on terrorism. She has won numerous other awards, starting with Young Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards for her coverage of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1988. She is the author of the best-selling 'The Africa House', 'Waiting for Allah', 'The Sewing Circles of Herat', 'Small Wars Permitting' and 'I Am Malala', co-authored with Malala Yousafzai.
Author photo © Chris Floyd
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