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Fatima Bhutto says her new memoir, The Hour of the Wolf, is not a book she wanted to write, but one she felt she had to.

In a video shared on Instagram, Bhutto sits on a couch with her dog Coco by her side and a copy of the book in her hand, explaining that the memoir grew out of a period in her life she was deeply ashamed of — a coercive relationship she stayed in far longer than she believes anyone ever should.

“I didn’t want to write it because I was ashamed, very ashamed,” she said, adding that she had been “broken in certain ways” and looking for something to fix her. “It took a long time to realise that I had to fix myself and save myself.”

Bhutto said she decided to write the book because she suspected other women feel the same way — ashamed and unable to talk about what they’ve experienced — and that silence keeps people stuck in harmful situations longer than they should be.

“I think we have to talk about it so fewer people spend time in those situations,” she said.

The memoir, which has already been released in the US and is due out in the UK next month, also centres on Coco, whom Bhutto credits with helping her through her most vulnerable period. In the video, she describes the book as being about dogs and the kind of love that comes “with no strings attached”, as well as friendship in its different forms.

Previously, Bhutto had said the book also reflects on anxiety, chosen family and the slow process of rebuilding a sense of self after emotional harm. Rather than positioning the memoir as a dramatic escape story, she frames it as an account of how difficult it can be to recognise coercion while you are still inside it, and how long it can take to begin trusting yourself again.

For Bhutto, that recognition is what ultimately made the book unavoidable. She may not have wanted to write The Hour of the Wolf, but, as she puts it, staying silent no longer felt like an option.