A well-intentioned but ultimately unsuccessful portrait of women in wartime Afghanistan.
Two women from different cultures collide in American-occupied Afghanistan in 2002.
Farida Basra doesn’t want to marry Gul, an uneducated Afghan man her father has selected for her. She doesn’t want to adapt to his family’s traditional way of life, and she especially doesn’t want to move from her native Pakistan to Kabul, where Gul and his family see opportunity in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But soon enough, she finds herself adjusting to her new life and finding not only passion with Gul, but also a shared enemy in the Americans who have invaded their city. One of those Americans is Liv Stoellner, an NGO worker married to a professor who specializes in Afghanistan. Liv’s marriage to the chronically unfaithful Martin begins to crumble when they move from their comfortable American college town to Kabul: While Liv throws herself into her work interviewing local women for Face the Future, Martin hides in his office writing reports that yield no results and lusting after Farida, who happens to be acting as Liv’s translator at her father-in-law’s behest. But Farida—and her family—is planning more than just translation. Florio, a white journalist who has reported in Afghanistan, has previously published a series of autobiographical mystery novels (Under the Shadows, 2018, etc.). This foray into literary fiction is well-meaning but misguided. Despite Florio’s evident familiarity with the novel’s setting, the Middle Eastern characters remain flimsy archetypes. Farida’s initial horror at her arranged marriage vanishes almost immediately, while Gul’s initial expressions of misogyny conveniently fade. Gul’s family is similarly two-dimensional, and the white American characters hardly fare better: Martin is cartoonishly boorish, and Liv’s persistent cluelessness is grating. The plot, meanwhile, is convoluted and frustrating: Face the Future is clearly tied to the U.S. government in some way, for instance, but this connection is never fully explored. The novel purports to explore the ethical quagmire of America’s occupation of Afghanistan, but with characters so limited, it can barely scratch the surface.
A well-intentioned but ultimately unsuccessful portrait of women in wartime Afghanistan.Pub Date: July 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8192-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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