Fundamentally is a contemporary political satire and the debut novel of Dr. Nussaibah Younis. Published in 2025 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., it has been shortlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize Award.
The novel is written from the perspective of Dr. Nadia Amin, an openly bi woman who has been sent to Iraq to lead a deradicalisation program for former ISIS brides.
On the surface, it seems like. Nadia has everything a young queer woman from a British-Arab family could possibly want: a bright mind, an advanced degree in criminology, and a fantastic career ahead of her. She also fits perfectly into British society, has an active social life, and has a loving girlfriend. But things are not always what they seem.
Nadia’s mother cannot accept her daughter’s atheism and queerness, and the two become estranged. Struggling with abandonment issues and copying all the wrong personality traits from those around her, Nadia ignores personal boundaries, and her relationships suffer.
With life in London becoming unbearable, the young academic accepts a post leading a new UN de-radicalisation program in Iraq. Her mission: the rehabilitation of former ISIS brides. But there are some problems: Nadia knows almost nothing about Iraqi culture, and she’s too Western and too queer to connect with the women she’s trying to help. Worst of all, she suddenly becomes too emotionally involved with one of the widows, a young Londoner named Sara.
Almost all of the story is dedicated to Nadia’s attempt to deradicalise Sara and the friendship that grows between those two — one that stays platonic, but that seems at times flirtatious. Meanwhile, Nadia has a short-lived relationship with her co-worker Tom, mostly to distract herself from her breakup back in England. At the end of the novel, Nadia has a real chance to begin another serious relationship but decides to prioritise her mental health and take some time to herself.
Right from the beginning of the novel, the reader sees that Nadia is bi, as she dates both men and women. Fundamentally represents bisexuality as something normal and socially acceptable. It’s a political satire about a woman in a relatively high UN position, but she’s not a token LGBT person, and the novel’s plot is not dedicated to problems surrounding her sexuality, as is so common in LGBT fiction. Nadia’s relationships play an important role, but they’re mostly there to show the development of her character, not to discuss LGBT issues.