Publisher Description

A gripping narrative by journalist from Kurdistan who volunteered as a sniper in the fight against ISIS In 2002, at the age of nineteen, Azad, a young Kurdish man, was conscripted into Iran's army and forced to fight against his own people. Refusing to go to war against his fellow Kurds, Azad deserted and smuggled himself to the United Kingdom, where he was granted asylum, became a citizen, and learned English. But more than a decade later, having returned to the Middle East as a social worker in the wake of the Syrian civil war, Azad found that he would have to pick up a weapon once again. In September 2014, after twenty-one days of intensive training as a sniper, Azad became one of seventeen volunteer marksmen deployed by the Kurdish army when ISIS besieged the city of Kobani in Rojava, the newly autonomous region of the Kurds. In Long Shot, Azad tells the inside story of how the Kurdish forces fought nine months of bloody street battles against the Islamic State. Vastly outnumbered, the Kurds would have to kill the jihadis one by one, and Azad takes readers on a harrowing journey behind rebel frontlines to reveal the sniper unit's essential role in fighting, and eventually defeating, ISIS. Weaving the brutal events of war with personal and political reflection, Azad meditates on the incalculable price of victory--the permanent effects of war on the body and mind; the devastating death of six of his closest comrades; the loss of hundreds of volunteers who died in battle. But as Azad explains, these were sacrifices that saved not only a city but a people and their land. Rojava was freed, and ISIS, which once threatened the world, never fully recovered. At once wrenching and redemptive, Long Shot is a dramatic account of modern war that tells the story of how, against all odds, a few thousand men and women achieved the impossible and kept their dream of freedom alive.

Author Biography

AZAD CUDI is a 35-year-old British national from a Kurdish background. Based in London and Brussels, Azad grew up in eastern Kurdistan, where he was conscripted into the army and escaped to the UK. Aged 19, he was granted asylum and citizenship, learnt English and began working as a journalist for the Kurdish diaspora media. In 2011, Azad was working for a television station in Stockholm when the Syrian civil war broke out and the Kurds established their autonomous enclave. Azad's response was to fly out to Syria and work as a social worker, but as the civil war expanded he became a fighter in the volunteer army, the YPG.

Excerpt from Book

When they attacked Kobani in the autumn of 2014, ISIS sent twelve thousand jihadis against our two and a half thousand men and women. They had artillery, mortars, tanks and heavy machine guns, mobile battle kitchens and surgeries, even social media managers and investment specialists to manage their trade in pillaged oil and artefacts. We lacked the most basic equipment, right down to binoculars and radios, ate whatever we found in the kitchens of abandoned houses and armed ourselves with forty-year-old Kalashnikovs and a few boxes of ammunition. If surviving these odds was already a figurative long shot, our meagre tools ensured it would also require literal ones. Sniping - killing the invaders one by one - was one of the few tactics available to us. I have often been asked how many we killed. I always refused to answer. Only a weak man would measure himself in kills. Only a fool would try to describe all the hate, loss, sacrifice and love in war with a number. If only to set the matter aside, let me say at the outset that in eight months, our snipers decimated them. Herdem killed 500, Hayri 350 and me 250, making more than a thousand between us. My task in these pages is to explain how we accumulated these terrible numbers in a way that you might understand us.

Description for Sales People

Rojava and the Kurdish army have been in the news since shortly after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, but there have been very few books about or profiles of Rojava and their efforts. Long Shot will tell the important, previously untold story of the rebel army that defeated ISIS, giving voice to a group of people who are often silent in our media. Azad spent two years in the ranks of the Kurdish militias, fighting on the front lines in the army's sniper unit. Never before have we had accounts from Kurdish soldiers with on the ground experience. Azad and two of his closest comrades were together responsible for taking down about 1,000 ISIS fighters, which was about 10% of ISIS's forces. Out of the three men, Azad is the only one who survived; his two comrades died on the battlefield. Long Shot is a dramatic and captivating war story; a depiction of what it was like to fight ISIS up close. Azad describes at length the tactics and mechanics of sniping, and takes us through the harrowing, 9-month-long war between the Kurdish army and ISIS battle by battle. This is the first detailed account of the battle of Kobani, a major victory for the Kurds that facilitated the ultimate defeat of ISIS. The story of Rojava and their fight for freedom is also a story of progressive political ideals that will astonish and inspire Western readers. When the Kurds occupied Rojava, they began to build an autonomous state based on principles of democracy and gender equality--a tolerant, liberal sanctuary amidst oppressive totalitarian regimes. Azad is writing his story with the help of journalist Alex Perry, a British foreign correspondent who was previously at TIME magazine. Perry wrote a feature article for The New Yorker this past January about the women who brought down the Calabrian mafia. This summer, Perry's book on the same subject will be published by Willian Morrow. Long Shot will be simultaneously published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK, Droemer Knaur in Germany, Longanesi in Italy, and Luitingh-Sijthoff in the Netherlands. We'll be making early advance reading copies and sending them to esteemed writers of war narratives, including Jon Lee Anderson, Mark Bowden, and Charles Glass, in hopes of securing a few stellar blurbs.

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