Looking back, I realize that my first review for this year was of a journalist’s account of Afghanistan following the end of Taliban rule, and one of my favorite novels of the year, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, was set in Afghanistan. It seems nicely symmetrical, then, that my final review of 2004 is for an equally beguiling visit to the same country.

In The Storyteller’s Daughter, Saira Shah recounts a number of journeys that survey the sweep of Afghan history in recent decades. A British journalist and the child of exiled Afghans, Shah was raised on her father’s stories of lush orchards, flinty warriors, and the luminous beauty of purple mountains. She’s the first to admit, however, that her visits to her ancestral land have diverged wildly from her father’s expatriate memories. Returning to Afghanistan, she’s dressed as a boy to travel with mujahedeen fighters and donned the concealing burqa, the voluminous veil mandated for women by the Taliban, to capture the stories of Afghanistan’s secret women’s movement.

I was lucky enough to hear Shah speak earlier this month in London at a lecture sponsored by the British Institute of Human Rights. She’s a remarkably thoughtful and grounded speaker, qualities that also infuse her writing, giving her accounts of extreme situations a personal dimension and universal relevance. Her topic then was human rights reporting, a subject that constantly bubbles beneath the surface of her memoir. Shah takes readers with her as she slips past soldiers to film the squalor of Afghanistan’s neglected women’s hospitals. She places refugees and casualties front and center as she works to portray the realities of war without exploiting its victims.

The Storyteller’s Daughter will be of great interest to those interested in
the process of newsmaking, events in Afghanistan, or women’s movements. I’d especially recommend it to those who enjoyed War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. Throughout her book, Shah provides an eyewitness view of life on the borders of danger. Thrilling and sometimes shocking, it is also highly reflective and a fascinating look into the lives of foreign correspondents in an age when much American news is being made overseas. Saira Shah is an excellent guide: Like her father, she's a storyteller of remarkable power.

Review by Mark Bradshaw, December 30, 2004

Reviews of other engaging recent books on Afghanistan:

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini:
http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0404-010.html

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad:
http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0104-001.html

 

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