My mother, Samira al-Mana, who has died aged 91, was an Iraqi who moved to the UK when she was 30 and subsequently wrote five novels, two collections of short stories and a play.
Her work, which was written in Arabic, focused on the difficult choices faced by everyday citizens living within authoritarian settings, as well as the travails of people living in exile. Her books were blacklisted by the Iraqi state from 1979 until 2003, and have frequently been blocked from official circulation in a variety of Arab states.
