Finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2024

Congratulations! Your pain is commercially viable.

It’s 1991 and the Gulf War rages three thousand, three hundred and twenty miles away. Darlee is 8 years old, crying behind the wheelie bookcase in Miss Stratford’s classroom. She’s just realised she’s Iraqi. Or half. Maybe both.

She saw it on the news last night after Neighbours and fish fingers. Heard the fear slipping through the receiver, saw it oozing from Dad’s eyeballs and into the living room as he tried to phone home.

What she can’t process now, she’ll be haunted by later; the spirits hounding her will make sure of that…

Baghdaddy is a playfully devastating coming-of-age story, told through clowning and memory to explore the complexities of cultural identity, generational trauma and a father-daughter relationship amidst global conflict.

This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at London’s Royal Court Theatre in November 2022.