Rape and war have a long and painful history, stretching from Alexander the Great through the ‘comfort women’ of the Imperial Japanese Army to the abuse of German women by the Red Army during World War Two. Today, the story hasn’t changed. Rape is a cruel, insidious and growing part of war, used against hundreds of thousands of women – often as part of barbaric military strategy.

In this searing, angry reckoning of a book – the first major account to address the scale of sexual assault in modern conflict – Christina Lamb exposes the unheard stories of women with unfailing care and humanity and how in countries around the world rape is used as a weapon. It is also a biting condemnation of the way rape is accepted and ignored.

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2021 & Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2020, Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women is the first major account to address the scale of rape and sexual violence in modern conflict.

Speakers:

Christina Lamb is Chief Foreign Correspondent at The Sunday Times and one of Britain’s leading foreign journalists. She is the best-selling author of Farewell Kabul, The Africa House, Waiting For Allah, The Sewing Circles of Herat and House of Stone. She also co-wrote the international bestseller I am Malala with Malala Yousafzai and The Girl from Aleppo with Nujeen Mustafa. She is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an honorary fellow of University College, Oxford and was awarded an OBE by the Queen in 2013.

Kelly Falconer is the founder of the Asia Literary Agency, which represents Asian writers, experts on Asia and writers living in the region.

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