Fundamentally (2025)

Why this one?

It’s another one from the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist, which as usual I am reading in full (albeit pretty slowly this year).

Nussaibah Younis was born in the UK to an Iraqi father and a Pakistani mother and currently lives in London. She studied at Oxford, Durham and Harvard and has a PhD in International Affairs. She is a self-described ‘former do-gooder’ who worked for over a decade in academia, think-tanks and peacebuilding in the Middle East. She is a globally recognised expert on Iraq and for several years advised the Iraqi government on proposed programmes to deradicalise ISIS-affiliated women. Fundamentally is her first novel, and she is currently working on her second alongside writing the screenplay for an hotly-contested TV adaptation of her debut.

Thoughts, etc.

Fundamentally is the story of Nadia, an academic of Middle Eastern origin based in the UK, who has recently been poached from her cushy job in academia to go to Iraq to lead a UN taskforce focused on deradicalising women associated with ISIS. While her new role has some honourable intent behind it, she’s also escaping dissatisfaction with her life back home, where she has been disowned by her mother for straying too far from Islam and (in related news) dumped by her English girlfriend Rosy.

In Iraq, she finds an increasing gap between her theoretical plans for her new role and the practical realities. Her initial hurdles are internal., with rivalries between organisations for influence on the programme, a boss with very different priorities and a small staff of two who are (to say the least) reluctant team-members. She’s also got the distraction of a hunky unreconstructed chap working in security and a kindly Iraqi driver to draw focus away from the main task. Her interest is fully grabbed, though, when she visits the camp and makes an immediate connection with Sara, a Londoner who left for ISIS aged 15 who seems to represent a ‘parallel path’ Nadia could have taken in her own life.

I have to admit that it took me some time to click with this one. While its primary intent is humour (Younnis apparently did some of her ‘research’ for her first creative writing job in comedy clubs), I found that on occasion its straightforward romantic comedy rubbed up slightly uncomfortably against its more serious underlying concerns. This was particularly true in the first half, where the balance felt seriously off to me. I also found the central cast of characters at the UN to be somewhat overpopulated by two-dimensional caricatures - the posh self-centred boss; the muscle-bound security dude who has a bit of a heart; the French guy who is just… French; etc. For my tastes, it was also - like The Ministry of Time on the longlist - too transparently focused on a being adapted for the screen, with heavy use of dialogue giving little chance for the sort of inner exploration that I tend to enjoy more. The dialogue itself was a mixed bag - occasionally sparky and witty, occasionally clunky and again trading in cliche - particularly when we get to meet the ‘how to speak Gen Z’ vernacular of East Londoner Sara.

Initial rant over, there was also plenty to enjoy in here. The central character, while clearly largely autobiographical, felt much more real and human than most of those surrounding her, and her backstory was among the more engaging parts of the book - with her (familiar, but well-handled) relationship with her puritanical (but also hypocritical mother) and her more complex and intriguing ex-relationship with Rosy both feeling much more rounded-out than the main present-day storyline. In the first half of the book, the characters may feel a little flimsy but they play an important role in a pleasing (if not laugh out loud) satire on the battle between bureaucracy, careerism and idealism even in a situation where an outsider might assume that the latter might obviously triumph. I also couldn’t fail to mention the book’s one genuinely hilarious move, which is the introduction of US Muslim convert Sheikh Jason, a bewildered naive idealist (‘clearly a Buddhist’) who is recruited as camp adviser due to the lack of better options.

Unlike some of my other recent reads, I felt this one started unpromisingly but developed into something much smarter and more engaging. The back-and-forth jokey tone is moderated later on, as we first see Nadia faced with the genuine peril of a cross-border escape (which is nicely thriller-esque and should definitely play well if the screen adaptation is decent) and then later start to be faced with the horrific realisation that her seemingly honourably-motivated favouritism for Sara might have in fact been rooted in narcissism and led her to make some misguided decisions. This section was by far my favourite, as it brought to the surface a depth that had only been hinted at in the rest of the book. It also made me slightly more positively reassess the first half in the light of the new revelations.

Its ending is a little too neat and tidy for my liking, but again I suppose this is positioned as comedy and therefore we should expect a ‘happy ending’ of sorts. This one, complete with the ultimate filmy ending of a ‘what happened to every minor character’ epilogue, wasn’t really up my street but by that point Fundamentally had done enough to make me warm to its essential status as slightly edgy romantic comedy and give it a pass.

Score

7

As seems more common with the Women’s Prize than the Booker, this is a genre book rather than something that sits neatly in my ‘literary’ sweet-spot and therefore I feel slightly less well qualified to rate it. I enjoyed the bits that went deeper, questioned assumptions and brought more life to the characters, even as I found the romance (inevitably) and the comedy a little less to my tastes.

Next up

I’ve started The Persians but am not so far getting on with it, so may need to take a break from ‘humour’ and come back to it later.