There are stories that leave us speechless, and then there are stories that remind us of the extraordinary strength it can take to begin again. Nadia Murad’s life contains both. Now, with the release of her new memoir, I Choose My Beginning: A Story of Courage and Activism, she is telling a story that reaches beyond survival and into something even more profound: the reclamation of a life.
In 2014, Murad was a young Yazidi woman living in Kocho, a village in northern Iraq, when ISIS attacked her community as part of its campaign against the Yazidi population. Hundreds were killed, including Murad’s mother and six of her brothers. Murad and thousands of other Yazidi women and girls were abducted and subjected to sexual slavery. After months in captivity, she escaped and eventually reached Germany.
Murad first told the story of what happened to her in her bestselling debut memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State. The book reaches back to her peaceful childhood in Kocho before recounting the horrors of the 2014 Yazidi genocide: the murder of her mother and six brothers, her abduction and enslavement by ISIS, and the captivity she ultimately escaped. It also traces the beginning of her transformation from a young woman whose world had been devastated into an internationally recognized advocate determined to speak for those who could no longer speak for themselves.
What followed could have been a lifetime defined by what had been done to her. Instead, Murad chose to speak.
She began telling the world what had happened to her and to countless other women and girls, becoming a powerful advocate for survivors of sexual violence and genocide. In 2016, she was named the United Nations’ first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. Two years later, she received the Nobel Peace Prize, sharing the honor with physician and fellow advocate Denis Mukwege for their efforts to end sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.
But Murad’s newest chapter—and her second memoir—is not simply about what she survived. It is about who she became afterward.
Published in September 2026, I Choose My Beginning: A Story of Courage and Activism explores the woman behind the global symbol of courage. Murad writes about learning to be a student, a friend and a wife, about rediscovering ordinary happiness, and about building a life that is not defined solely by trauma. The publisher describes the memoir as a journey toward a life shaped by strength, perseverance and the freedom to choose happiness.
That distinction matters.
There is tremendous courage in surviving what seems impossible. But there is another kind of courage in allowing yourself to imagine a future that belongs to you. Murad’s story suggests that reclaiming a life does not mean forgetting what happened. It means refusing to let it become the only story.
Her advocacy continues through Nadia’s Initiative, the organization she founded to help rebuild communities affected by genocide and advance the rights of women and survivors.
Today, Murad’s story offers something larger than inspiration. It offers perspective. A life can be shattered without being finished. A woman can carry profound loss and still make room for joy, purpose, love and possibility.
Sometimes beginning again is not about becoming who you were before.
It is about finally choosing who you will become.