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CROSSING THE RIVER KABUL

Name: CROSSING THE RIVER KABUL
Author: Kevin McLean
ISBN: 978-1-61234-897-1

AN AFGHAN FAMILY ODYSSEY

by Kevin McLean ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2017

Details of Afghan tribal life and family well-delineated.

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A Western writer affectingly takes up the voice of a beleaguered Afghan man and his harrowing flight out of his war-torn country.

McLean assumes the first-person point of view of Baryalai Popal, an Afghan refugee who is now an American citizen. Popal, who hails from one of two “royal families” of Afghanistan, was forced to flee the country with the invasion of the Soviets in 1980 because of his deep family ties. McLean moves back and forth in time to tell Popal’s story, from his perilous flight out of Kabul in October 1980, when the Soviet police were searching his home for him, through an arduous journey into Pakistan and eventual flight out of Karachi to Turkey, and then Germany, where he was able to claim asylum and bring his wife and children, thanks to help from the American consulate. Through the story of Popal, a shortening of the family name Popalzai, the historic enemy of the Barakzai, McLean weaves a fascinating story about family and tribal ties within a culture used to being overrun by foreigners (British, Russian, American) and marked by ongoing traditions that mark loyalty to family, such as hospitality to foreigners. Popal’s father, Abdul Rahman Popal, studied in Paris in the 1920s at the dictates of the modernizing King Amanullah and Gen. Nadir. He was subsequently summoned to serve in many advisory roles, as leaders changed sides depending on the way the political wind was blowing. As a result, Popal the son could rely on many extended friends and acquaintances in his flight to Pakistan, although he largely depended on his wits to survive. Ultimately, the book delineates a sense of what it means to hail from a proud Afghan family in the throes of violence.

Details of Afghan tribal life and family well-delineated.

Pub Date: June 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-61234-897-1

Page Count: 264

Publisher: Potomac Books

Review Posted Online: April 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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BLACK BOY

A RECORD OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945

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This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.

It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.

Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.

Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945

ISBN: 0061130249

Page Count: 450

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND
by Richard Wright

- BOOK REVIEW
SEEING INTO TOMORROW
by Richard Wright ; illustrated by Nina Crews

- BOOK REVIEW
A FATHER’S LAW
by Richard Wright

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.