About Elizabeth Loudon

I grew up in Oxfordshire, then spent a year travelling in Iraq and Lebanon before studying English at Cambridge, after which I moved to the US. I earned an MFA in Fiction at the University of Massachusetts and stayed in New England for 25 years, teaching English and working as a fundraiser and charity development consultant.

Along the way I published fiction and memoir in the Denver Quarterly, INTRO, North American Review, and the Gettysburg Review, and was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship for Fiction. A Stranger in Baghdad is my debut novel, and a tribute to the people I met long ago in Baghdad. It was longlisted for the Bridport Novel Award and won the Stroud Book Festival Fiction Award.

I now live in Gloucestershire and am working on a new novel and writing poetry. My poetry has been published in a wide range of journals and nominated for both a Pushcart and a Forward prize. Links to published poems can be found below.

SIBF Prize Winner 2024

Winner of the 2024 Sharjah International Book Fair Prize for Best Fiction Book.
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A novel

A Stranger
In Baghdad

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A Stranger in Baghdad book cover
LONGLISTED FOR THE BRIDPORT NOVEL AWARD

A Stranger In Baghdad

Summoning up the vanished world of mid-twentieth-century Baghdad, Elizabeth Loudon's richly evocative story of one family calls into question British attitudes and policies in Iraq and offers up a penetrating reflection on cross-cultural marriage and the lives of women caught between different worlds.

Readers and reviewers alike are praising A Stranger In Baghdad for its "stunning acumen and imagination" (The New Arab). Noshin Bokth describes it as "a delicately crafted saga of subterfuge, family, identity, and the turbulent convergence of disparate cultures". In the Washington Independent Review of Books, reviewer AA Bastian admires how the book "majestically dances you into the thick of it all, down to the 'long black fringes' of Diane’s shawl and the essence of old Baghdad embodied in their first home."

For full reviews, see:

Listen to the first chapter

Hear voice artist Janneke van der Weijden read the first chapter of A Stranger In Baghdad.

Reviews

A Stranger in Baghdad is vivid and fascinating. There is an elegance to the writing which makes every page distinctive. I found it completely enthralling.

Lissa Evans, author of Crooked Heart

Intriguing and atmospheric.

Alice Jolly, author Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile

A page-turner that is also full of marvellous description and atmosphere. It feels beautifully true and of its time but with a contemporary sensibility. The conflict between Britain and Iraq at a political and a family level is brilliantly done, with the cross-cutting allegiances dividing and uniting in a web of love, ambition and lies.

Sofka Zinovieff, author of Putney and The House on Paradise Street

An intriguing and thoughtfully worked examination of one family’s cross-cultural collisions between Britain and Iraq.

Justin Marozzi, author of Baghdad and Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities That Define a Civilization

The story of Diane and Ibrahim and their torn loyalties to family and nation, and how their children grow up in post-royalist police-state Iraq, is told with mesmerizing power. Elizabeth Loudon's mastery of the historical, cultural as well as psychological details of such a narrative is truly moving.

Rana Haddad, author of The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor

Original, beautifully written and intriguing. Elizabeth Loudon is an exciting new voice.

Katie Fforde, author of A Wedding in Provence

A haunting, beautifully written book about 20th century Baghdad and the long aftermath of colonialism. Full of subtle, empathetic details that ring like bells, intricately plotted with unforgettable twists, this book will stay with you long after you think you finished it.

Annia Ciezadlo, author of Day of Honey

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A Stranger in Baghdad: A Novel is available for order now in hardcover, paperback and eBook formats.

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Poetry

Published Poems