Book review: The Girl Who Beat Isis

Farida Khalaf was hanging out with friends at her home in Iraq when she was captured by Isis and sold into sex slavery. Her crime? Belonging to the Yazidi minority. Colette Sheridan reads the harrowing tale.

THE contrast between the pleasant life of 18-year-old Farida Khalaf (not her real name) in the northern Iraqi village of Kocho two years ago, and the subsequent descent into a nightmarish existence in which she was sold into sex slavery by Isis terrorists, couldn’t be starker.

From hanging out with her friends during school holidays in her family garden — resplendent with mulberry, almond and apricot trees — to attempting suicide as a result of being raped and regularly beaten up by her tormentors, the wonder is that Farida lived to tell her tale.