Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam

Zainab Salbi was eleven years old when her father was chosen to be Saddam Hussein's personal pilot and her family's life was grafted onto his. Her mother, the beautiful Alia, taught her daughter the skills she needed to survive. A plastic smile. Saying yes. Burying in boxes in her mind the horrors she glimpsed around her. "Learn to erase your memories," she instructed. "He can read eyes."

In this richly visual memoir, Salbi describes tyranny as she saw it - through the eyes of a privileged child, a rebellious teenager, a violated wife, and ultimately a public figure fighting to overcome the skill that once kept her alive: silence.

Between Two Worlds is a riveting quest for truth that deepens our understanding of the universal themes of power, fear, sexual subjugation, and the question one generation asks the one before it: How could you have let this happen to us?

Zainab Salbi is the founder and president of Women for Women International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing women of war and civil unrest with the resources to become self-sufficient citizens and promote peace. She holds degrees from George Mason University and the London School of Economics, and she has publicized her work widely in the media, including six appearances on Oprah.

Laurie Becklund is a Los Angeles journalist and author. A former Los Angeles Times reporter, she wrote the first story about Salbi in 1991, when Zainab was a young woman stranded in America after a failed marriage during the Gulf War.