I put my fingers in my ears and sang loudly throughout the preface while having a strong urge to run away from the sheer density of facts and figures about the Middle East, wars, geopolitics and history. But I pricked up my ears when I realised how lonely and depressingly human the return to London life and a cold unwelcoming flat was for the author, a single woman, who hadn't cooked or done anything remotely ordinary for years. War weary, alienated and strangely institutionalised by an extraordinary career path, she sparks up conversations with strangers who us pedestrian folk usually shy away from, like the soldier who is trying out his painful new running blades in the park, having lost his legs to an IED. Like anyone who is having trouble adjusting to life back home, she decides to take a holiday. To Sudan. Alone. Of course. It makes for an awkward stamp on her passport when she later enters the US, grilled by an officious customs official. Here is travelogue, political critique, historical exposition and autobiography rolled into one and recounted with humour, pathos and humility. And, of particular interest to me, it is all these things told from the perspective of a woman - a British woman - treading a unique and dangerous path few, if any, have walked before her as she travels through pivotal and devastating moments of recent history in the Middle East.