Gina Wilkinson is an award-winning former journalist, foreign correspondent and documentary-maker turned novelist who spent over a year living in Baghdad under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and later the Iraq War. Time during which she was befriended by a local woman whom she later found out was working as a secret police informant and was reporting Gina's every move.

Gina's experiences during that time inspired her to pen her memoir in 2007 and also formed the basis of her recently released debut novel called "When the Apricots Bloom" (Hachette).

This was an unforgettable, evocative story that so beautifully captured the uneasy alliance between the old world and the new; between eastern and eastern cultures and the common experiences that unite people instead of dividing them.

I was honoured to chat with Gina on the podcast recently.