The Afghans Three lives through war, love, and revolt

Review by Booklist Review

In Seierstad's (Two Sisters, 2018) remarkable look at chaotic recent decades in Afghanistan, larger forces shape the lives of three people: an Islamic feminist, a Taliban commander, and a young woman eager to enter the world, only to have the door slammed on her future. Jamila, born just before the Soviet invasion, kept asking for one more year of school while growing up. Eventually, she founded an organization promoting education and was forced into exile in Norway. Bashir, born as the Soviet-Afghan War neared its end, ran off at age 12 to become a holy warrior. By age 16, he was planting bombs for the Taliban and would rise through their ranks before being arrested and sentenced to death. Ariana, born at the turn of the millennium, goes to law school, only to see her career hopes dashed, forced instead by her family to get engaged. Seierstad chronicles years of war and the rise and resurgence of the Taliban through the intimate, affecting portraits of three lives lived in history's shadow.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this searing panorama of Afghanistan, journalist Seierstad (The Bookseller of Kabul) surveys the tumultuous period from the rise of the Taliban in the mid-1990s through their ouster after the September 11 attacks, their long guerrilla war against the U.S.-backed government, and their return to power in 2021. She focuses on three protagonists: Jamila Afghani, who defied her family to get an education, eventually starting a women's rights NGO and becoming a government official; Bashir, a Taliban commander who orchestrated bombings and kidnappings; and Ariana, a young law school graduate whose aspirations were stifled when the Taliban retook control. Seierstad gives an extraordinarily intimate portrait of the Taliban, who are motivated by ardent religious faith and endure agonizing sacrifices (Bashir was captured and brutally tortured by government forces). She also investigates the restrictions Afghan society places on women, who are denied education and careers, confined to the home, and sold in marriage ("Mahmoud rang every evening," Seierstad writes of the obsequious yet domineering man whom Ariana's parents are pressuring her to marry. "He was suffocating her with all his nattering" and "his constant refrain 'I'm doing this for you, just tell me what you want, I will do everything you ask"). It's a gripping, richly textured account of Afghanistan's ordeal that humanizes all sides. (Aug.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A moving history through Afghan eyes. Seierstad, an award-winning Norwegian journalist and the author ofThe Bookseller of Kabul, chronicles Afghanistan's long history of fending off invaders but emphasizes the period after 1990 when, having expelled the USSR, it descended into a civil war that was finally won by the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic movement. Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1996. The governing Taliban was not involved in 9/11, but the Bush administration made a fatal error by making no distinction between it and al-Qaeda. Taliban leadership refused the U.S. demand to hand over bin Laden but offered to compromise by expelling him to another Islamic nation. Proclaiming that America would never yield to the "bad guys," President Bush ordered an invasion that quickly defeated Taliban forces, who did not stay defeated. This is not news to most readers, but Seierstad's account of three Afghans who lived through these events delivers a fascinating if ultimately painful experience. Bashir, whose father died fighting the Russians in 1987, realized his childhood ambition to become a fighter after the American invasion. He spent 20 years in combat, then led other fighters in small-scale actions that occasionally killed a few Americans, yet they suffered plenty of deaths themselves. After victory, he discovers that he dislikes the tedious life of an administrator but never doubts that the good guys won. Polio rendered Jamila unmarriageable but lessened her father's opposition to female schooling. She excelled and entered the American-supported government as an advocate of female education, but eventually she was forced to flee her native country, becoming a refugee. A member of a prosperous but conservative family, Ariana needed just one more semester to obtain a law degree when the Taliban expelled women from schools. For her protection, her family forced her to marry. Indelible portraits of people struggling to survive in a war-torn land. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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