01
Makeup as politics · Closest matchAzadeh Moaveni
Iranian-American · Lipstick Jihad (2005), Guest House for Young Widows (2019)
Moaveni was born in Palo Alto to Iranian parents who left before the 1979 revolution, and went on to report from Iran for Time. Lipstick Jihad is a memoir of Iranian youth culture in the reform years; Guest House for Young Widows follows women who joined the Islamic State. In 2020 she shared a panel with Hankir at Adelaide Writers’ Week. Moaveni sits closest to both of Hankir’s books. Lipstick Jihad treats lipstick, dress and the policing of women’s looks in Iran as politics, the ground Eyeliner covers for Iranian women; and like Hankir she writes about a homeland from both sides of the border. Moaveni stays with one country and one generation, where Hankir follows a single object across three millennia.
From inside:A daughter of the diaspora who went back: Tehran’s young people, reported by an Iranian who grew up in California.
The writer’s stake:Fully: the subtitle says it, Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran.
02
An Arab woman on the Syrian storyRania Abouzeid
Lebanese-Australian · No Turning Back (2018), Sisters of the War (2020)
Abouzeid was born in New Zealand, raised in Australia and is based in Beirut; she has reported from the Middle East for Time, The New Yorker and others. No Turning Back follows four young Syrians through the war, from more than five years of clandestine reporting, and won the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award. Abouzeid is the kind of reporter Our Women on the Ground is about, though she is not in it: an Arab woman covering the Syrian war from inside, for years rather than weeks. Hankir’s anthology gives each journalist her own voice; Abouzeid hands her book to the people she reported on. Read together, they show the same war from the reporter’s side and from theirs.
From inside:More than five years of clandestine reporting inside Syria, including access to the regime’s prisons.
The writer’s stake:Only partly: the book is carried by four Syrians, and the reporter stays in the background.
Rania Abouzeid books in order, and where I'd start →
03
A Lebanese house, rebuiltAnthony Shadid
American · Night Draws Near (2005), House of Stone (2012)
Shadid, an American of Lebanese descent born in Oklahoma City, won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2004 and 2010. House of Stone tells of rebuilding his great-grandfather Isber Samara’s house in Marjayoun, in southern Lebanon. He died in Syria in February 2012, shortly before it was published, and it became a National Book Award finalist. Shadid is tied to Hankir’s anthology directly: Nada Bakri’s essay in Our Women on the Ground is about his death and what it did to her work. House of Stone is also a return to the south of Lebanon, where Hankir’s own family comes from. He tells a region’s history through one house, as she tells one through a single cosmetic.
From inside:Night Draws Near tells the Iraq war through ordinary Iraqis rather than through the occupiers.
The writer’s stake:House of Stone is his own family’s history, written into the rebuilding of one house.
04
The journalist who became a poetDunya Mikhail
Iraqi-American · The War Works Hard (2005), The Beekeeper (2018)
Mikhail worked at The Baghdad Observer as a journalist and translator before leaving Iraq in 1996 as a writer under censorship. The Beekeeper, published in Britain as The Beekeeper of Sinjar, tells how Abdullah Shrem, a beekeeper from Sinjar, smuggled Yazidi women out of Islamic State captivity, much of it from phone calls between Mikhail in Michigan and Shrem in Iraq. Mikhail does what Hankir does as an editor — gathers other people’s accounts and keeps them in their own words — but from thousands of miles away, by phone. Like the reporters in Our Women on the Ground, she writes about her own country’s war in her own language; unlike them, she does it as a poet.
From inside:An Iraqi writing about Iraq’s war in Arabic, from testimony the women and their rescuer gave her directly.
The writer’s stake:She is in the book: the phone calls, her questions and her own first-person scenes sit beside the testimony.
05
The polemic from insideMona Eltahawy
Egyptian-American · Headscarves and Hymens (2015), The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls (2019)
Born in Port Said, Eltahawy reported for Reuters from Cairo and Jerusalem in the 1990s. In November 2011, covering protests in Cairo, she was detained for twelve hours, sexually assaulted, and had her left arm and right hand broken. Her 2012 Foreign Policy essay “Why Do They Hate Us?” became Headscarves and Hymens. Eltahawy shares Hankir’s subject — Arab women and who gets to describe them — but not her method. Hankir edits and multiplies voices; Eltahawy argues in the first person, and her Foreign Policy essay drew objections from Arab writers who said it flattened the region into one story. That makes her the complication here: the same insider position, used to generalise.
From inside:An Egyptian writing about misogyny in the Arab world, from her own country’s streets.
The writer’s stake:Fully, and on purpose: her own body and her assault in Cairo are part of the argument.
06
Not American · Women’s war, in their wordsSvetlana Alexievich
Belarusian · The Unwomanly Face of War (1985), Secondhand Time (2013)
Alexievich, born in 1948 in Soviet Ukraine and a Belarusian citizen writing in Russian, finished The Unwomanly Face of War in 1983; it sat with the publisher for two years while she was accused of debunking the heroic image of the Soviet woman. It is built from the testimony of women who served in the Second World War. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015 “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”. Alexievich did in 1985 what Our Women on the Ground does in 2019: put women’s accounts of war in place of the official version, and keep them in the first person. The difference is who speaks. Hankir’s contributors are professional reporters writing their own essays; Alexievich’s are snipers, medics and soldiers whose words she recorded and arranged.
From inside:A Soviet writer collecting the war her own country told one way, from the women that version left out.
The writer’s stake:Partly: short passages from her own notebooks frame the book, but the pages belong to the women she recorded.
Svetlana Alexievich books in order, and where I'd start →
07
What the work costs a womanLynsey Addario
American · It’s What I Do (2015), Of Love & War (2018)
Addario has photographed wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Ukraine for The New York Times; in 2009 she shared the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and received a MacArthur Fellowship. In March 2011 she was one of four Times journalists held by Gaddafi’s forces in Libya. It’s What I Do is her memoir of that working life. Addario writes about a problem several of Hankir’s contributors write about: what doing this work as a woman costs, and what access it opens. The difference is position. She arrives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya from outside; for the reporters in Our Women on the Ground, the story is also home.
From inside:Only half: she comes to these wars as an American, though she has gone back to the same region for two decades.
The writer’s stake:Fully: the memoir is about what the work cost her as a woman, a wife and a mother.
08
The outsider who kept coming backMarie Colvin
American · On the Front Line (2012)
Colvin was a foreign correspondent for the British Sunday Times from 1985 until her death, and its Middle East correspondent from 1986. She lost the sight in her left eye to a grenade in Sri Lanka in 2001 and was killed in Homs, Syria, on 22 February 2012; in 2019 a US court found the Assad government liable. On the Front Line collects her journalism. Hankir has said the region’s story was long shaped by Western correspondents who arrive and leave. Colvin is a Western correspondent who kept coming back for twenty-five years and died in Homs. Her collection and Hankir’s anthology cover some of the same wars, Libya and Syria among them, from the two positions.
From inside:Half: an American on a British paper, but in the Middle East for a quarter of a century.
The writer’s stake:Partly: many dispatches are in the first person, but the subject is the civilians under fire.
09
Not American · The argument againstÅsne Seierstad
Norwegian · The Bookseller of Kabul (2002), One of Us (2013)
After the fall of the Taliban, Seierstad lived with the family of a Kabul bookseller and wrote their lives as a novelistic account, with herself almost absent. The bookseller’s wife, Suraia Rais, won damages from an Oslo district court for invasion of privacy in 2010; an appeals court overturned the ruling in December 2011. One of Us is about the Utøya killer Anders Behring Breivik. Seierstad is here as the argument against. She did get inside — she lived in the house — but as a foreigner writing a family’s private thoughts in the third person, and the family went to court. Every essay in Our Women on the Ground takes the opposite route: the writer belongs to the place and puts her own name and position on the page.
From inside:No: a Norwegian in an Afghan home, writing what the family thought and felt.
The writer’s stake:Barely: she wrote herself almost out of the book, which is part of what was criticised.
Åsne Seierstad books in order, and where I'd start →
10
Older than the genreEdward Said
Palestinian-American · Orientalism (1978), Covering Islam (1981), Out of Place (1999)
Said, a literary scholar at Columbia University, argued in Orientalism that Western writing had long described the Middle East from outside and on its own terms. Covering Islam turned the argument on American media and experts, and Out of Place, his memoir of a childhood between Jerusalem, Cairo and Lebanon, won the New Yorker Prize for non-fiction in 1999. Said is older than the genre and supplies its theory: Covering Islam made in 1981 the complaint Hankir’s anthology answers in practice, that outsiders decide how the region is seen. He is a critic, not a reporter, so he gives the argument while Hankir’s contributors give the reporting.
From inside:A Palestinian born in Jerusalem, answering two centuries of European and American writing about his region.
The writer’s stake:Late, in Out of Place: the theory came first, the memoir of his own divided life two decades later.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Zahra Fatima Hankir
Who should I read if I like Zahra Hankir?
Azadeh Moaveni is the closest match: Lipstick Jihad reports Iran from inside and treats makeup as politics. Rania Abouzeid, Anthony Shadid and Dunya Mikhail write about the Arab world from inside it, Mona Eltahawy argues from inside it, Svetlana Alexievich collected women’s accounts of war long before, Lynsey Addario and Marie Colvin are Western correspondents who stayed, Åsne Seierstad is the argument against writing a family from outside, and Edward Said supplied the theory behind all of it.
What books are similar to Our Women on the Ground?
No Turning Back by Rania Abouzeid (2018) covers the Syrian war from inside, The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich (1985) collects women’s first-person accounts of war, and The Beekeeper by Dunya Mikhail (2018) gathers Yazidi women’s testimony. For a Western woman photographer on the same wars, read It’s What I Do by Lynsey Addario (2015).
What books are like Eyeliner: A Cultural History?
Lipstick Jihad by Azadeh Moaveni (2005) treats makeup and dress in Iran as politics and mixes memoir with reporting, as Eyeliner does. For another cultural history built on one everyday thing, try The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St. Clair (2016), whose author praised Eyeliner.
Who wrote the essays in Our Women on the Ground?
Nineteen Arab women journalists, among them Jane Arraf, Lina Sinjab, Zaina Erhaim, Hwaida Saad, Roula Khalaf, Nada Bakri and the Yemeni photographer Amira Al-Sharif. Zahra Hankir edited the collection and Christiane Amanpour wrote the foreword. It was published in 2019.
Where is Zahra Hankir from?
She was born in the United Kingdom during the Lebanese civil war to Lebanese parents, and the family returned to Lebanon in the 1990s. She studied politics at the American University of Beirut and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Manchester, went to Columbia Journalism School on a Jack R. Howard Fellowship, and reported for Bloomberg News in Dubai during the Arab Spring.
Is Eyeliner a memoir?
Partly. Eyeliner: A Cultural History (2023) is a history of the cosmetic from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, built on reporting with Wodaabe nomads in Chad, geishas in Japan, dancers in India and drag queens in New York, with Hankir’s own experience of wearing it woven through.
How many books has Zahra Hankir written?
Two, as of October 2026: Our Women on the Ground (2019), which she edited, and Eyeliner: A Cultural History (2023), which she wrote. Both are published by Penguin.
