Astrid Hawk
Added to listNonfictionwith 51 books.
Added to listMiddle Eastwith 4 books.
Added to listMemoirwith 26 books.
A truly impactful story, full of wisdom, introspection, grief, and brutality juxtaposed with shining moments of generosity and real humanity.
For much of this book, the author is 10-12 years old, and though he seems to have been a very introspective 10-year-old, he lacked a lot of the broader context and world experience to truly understand everything that was happening around him. In that sense, the story reads a bit like Solito, in which the author was 9 years old. 10-year-old Qais is subjected to scenes of unspeakable brutality, some of which he sustains on his own body. It is hard to read those parts. But then those moments of terror and torture are counterbalanced by instances of true generosity and warmth - like the family who welcomed his into their home after they caught him stealing pomegranates from their garden, and like the Kuchi family that welcomed them into their tribe as blood relatives.
As an American reading this book, I was treated (sometimes in a very painful way) to a story of Afghani culture that I hadn't known, and is difficult to find elsewhere (even in semi-autobiographical stories like The Kite Runner). The ending was very bittersweet, as at the time, it was a period of hope for Afghanistan with the Taliban rule lifted and foreign influence seeming like it might help Afghanistan rebuild their infrastructure and restore their old ways of life - but of course we know what happened in the following decade.
Bottom line - it's a compelling, riveting story, and a fantastic cultural education. A must-read.
A truly impactful story, full of wisdom, introspection, grief, and brutality juxtaposed with shining moments of generosity and real humanity.
For much of this book, the author is 10-12 years old, and though he seems to have been a very introspective 10-year-old, he lacked a lot of the broader context and world experience to truly understand everything that was happening around him. In that sense, the story reads a bit like Solito, in which the author was 9 years old. 10-year-old Qais is subjected to scenes of unspeakable brutality, some of which he sustains on his own body. It is hard to read those parts. But then those moments of terror and torture are counterbalanced by instances of true generosity and warmth - like the family who welcomed his into their home after they caught him stealing pomegranates from their garden, and like the Kuchi family that welcomed them into their tribe as blood relatives.
As an American reading this book, I was treated (sometimes in a very painful way) to a story of Afghani culture that I hadn't known, and is difficult to find elsewhere (even in semi-autobiographical stories like The Kite Runner). The ending was very bittersweet, as at the time, it was a period of hope for Afghanistan with the Taliban rule lifted and foreign influence seeming like it might help Afghanistan rebuild their infrastructure and restore their old ways of life - but of course we know what happened in the following decade.
Bottom line - it's a compelling, riveting story, and a fantastic cultural education. A must-read.
Added to listFantasywith 94 books.
Added to listDystopiaswith 27 books.
Read this in English as a child and somehow never read the original version even in French class. Looking forward to experiencing it in the author's original prose. (Goodreads does a terrible job with managing multiple-language editions of the same book... hope I can make this work.)
Read this in English as a child and somehow never read the original version even in French class. Looking forward to experiencing it in the author's original prose. (Goodreads does a terrible job with managing multiple-language editions of the same book... hope I can make this work.)
