Book Club Meets: I could have been radicalised! ISIS brides and teen angst, with Nussaibah Younis
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.7 • 15.6K Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fundamentally tells the story of Nadia, an academic who's been disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, so she decides to get away by accepting a UN job in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Sara is a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just fifteen, and Nadia is astounded at how similar they both are: they’re feisty and opinionated, they’re from a Muslim background, and they both love a Dairy Milk and rude pick-up lines...
In this Book Club chat with Fearne, author Nussaibah Younis explains how she managed to write an incredibly funny book based on her own experience of creating a de-radicalisation programme... Satire and comedy, she says, is vital in examining tough topics.
They also natter about how you’d react if you had to hang out with your teenage self, and why doing the job you love can sometimes mean giving up a little bit of yourself.
Thank you to Weidenfeld & Nicolson for the use of the Fundamentally audiobook, narrated by Sarah Slimani.
If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My sweat turned cold as a group of women walked in wearing long abeyers and headscarves. |
| 0:06.9 | Welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton. |
| 0:10.4 | I was terrified. |
| 0:12.2 | The women face-tay, fundamentally, by Nusaber Eunice. |
| 0:16.2 | What bait spying shit is this? said a girl from East London. |
| 0:20.7 | The familiarity of her accent drained |
| 0:22.7 | the tension from my body. There's nothing scary about a hijabi rude girl from Myel End. |
| 0:28.8 | Nostalgia summoned an image of Whitechapel Market, Rosie and me weaving through, eating our |
| 0:34.5 | brick-lane samosas after a Saturday at Spittlefields. |
| 0:42.5 | I used to think it was the biggest dump on earth, but that was before I came to Iraq. |
| 0:48.6 | The girl leaned on her forearms, her severe facial expression in Congress with her Diamante trimmed headscarf. I too had loved Diamante headscarf, back when I was religious, |
| 0:55.9 | bringing a hint of the 90s wag to my glamorous Islamic life. |
| 0:59.3 | Um, not spies, I promise, I said. Not the most professional way to open a focus group. |
| 1:06.5 | I took a breath and started again. |
| 1:09.1 | Hello everyone, thanks for joining us. |
| 1:11.8 | We're from the UN, and we'd like to share some ideas and proposals with you today. |
| 1:17.0 | But first, we'd love to hear from you about your immediate needs and concerns. |
| 1:22.6 | Everything you say is confidential, and we encourage you to be open and honest. |
| 1:27.7 | I tried to shift my gaze around the room, but East London girl had me transfixed. |
| 1:33.6 | Oh! |
| 1:35.1 | She rubbed her hands together. |
| 1:37.5 | Obviously I should trust you. |
... |
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