A Road Unforeseen: Women Fight the Islamic State

Readers will be moved by this story of an ethnic minority whose women are leading the struggle against the Islamic State. While these armed Kurdish women have been widely photographed, their politics and history have received little coverage. This book offers their first complete history and a lucid overview of the contenders, stakes, and complex relationships in Middle Eastern politics.

Meredith Tax has been writing on the conflict between Islamism and feminism since 1994 when, as founding chair of the International PEN Women Writers Committee, she defended Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin. Tax's 2013 treatise Double Bind was one of the first explorations of the troubling alliances between Western radical movements and Islamist militants and she has published other articles about these issues in the Nation and openDemocracy. Her 2015 Dissent magazine article, "The Revolution in Rojava," is the basis for this book.

BLP is developing a strong reputation for human rights titles through its publication of books such as The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers and Then They Started Shooting: Children of the Bosnian War and the Adults They Become, as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize-winning novel The Sojourn.