Product Description

This is an evocative family memoir and unique portrait of Afghanistan from a young Afghan journalist. Hamida Ghafour's family fled Kabul after the Russian invasion. In 2003, she was sent back by the Telegraph to cover the country's reconstruction. She finds a place changed utterly from the world her parents had described and her grandmother - an Afghan Virginia Woolf - had written about. All around her is the West's first post-9/11 experiment with an Islamic democracy. But the people she meets reveal a different kind of nation building: the 'beautician without borders' whose school teaches women a new kind of independence; her cousin's determined parliamentary campaign; the archaeologist digging for his country's lost civilization in the form of a giant sleeping Buddha. As she participates in her country's present, its elusive past and her family's own story come vividly together for Hamida. But only when she's standing by her grandmother's grave - after a heavily escorted Chinook trip to the wildest corner of the land - does she start to find her own place in it all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16559 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

New Statesman
`Extraordinary ... her eyewitness accounts provide powerful insights into recent events from the perspective of a western woman, but with the inside track of an Afghan.'

New Statesman
`Extraordinary ... her eyewitness accounts provide powerful
insights into recent events from the perspective of a western woman, but
with the inside track of an Afghan.'

Publishing News,
Gives great insight into a troubled land

Customer Reviews

Essential reading - forget everything you thought you knew about Afghanistan and read this.
The tragedy of Afghanistan is expertly told through a combination of family memoirs and the eyes of the ordinary Afghans, whom Ghafour meets whilst travelling through the land of her birth. The author left the country when she was a child and it would have been all too easy for her own opinions and beliefs to cloud the narrative - rather she lets the people she meets tell the story and you get a sense of a nation tired of continual conflict and wanting the same security, same opportunities and same prosperity as the rest of us.

Time and time again we learn how Afghanistan has been abused by invading cultures and countries, and it is testament to the people's courage and resilience that the book is peppered with ambitious hopes and dreams; both you and the author can't help but wish them well. By the end you get a sense of the total lack of understanding (and unwillingness to learn) that the west has for the country and the culture, prefering to impose it's own ideas of freedom and democracy at any cost; creating a 'Disney-esque' version of what Afghanistan should be. Again Ghafour lets us discover this for ourselves and the book is all the better for it.

This book should be added to the libraries of The White House, the Kremlin and Downing St; and should be made compulsory reading for all those you claim to understand, influence or implement foreign policy in the region.

A must read book
Books about Afghanistan are often seen to be dire and tedious but be ready to put aside those stereotypes with Hamida's wonderfully evocative memoir. I was unable to put it down and shared each step of the journey with her.

At last a book that acknowledges that there are two sides to every story. Hamida manages to present a fair and accurate picture of an oppressed nation that has been so often demonised in Western Media. At the end of the day, her story shows that behind the headlines, the Afghans are no different from any other nation.

Hamida does not patronise nor pass judgement, she simply observes. The power of the story lies in the ordinariness of Afghan life; they are ordinary people trying to lead an ordinary life under extraordinary conditions.

It is a timely book that goes a long way to explaining how the world has arrived at what is euphemisticaly called a 'clash of civilisations'.

A must read for anyone wanting to understanding the extraordinary juncture of history at which we find ourselves.

An English woman's view
Having read this book I have a better idea of the complexities of Afghan history and politics. More than anything, it was the sadness of leaving your home, your culture and your family, and then returning to find such a totally different place, that struck me most. Those of us who are free and live in "civilised democracies" do not realise how lucky we are. Everyone should read this book.