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So, this weekend I'm going to start on the mammoth task of trying to read at least 1 fiction and 1 non-fiction book from/about every country in the world. I'm trying to broaden the range of books I read while gaining a better understanding of the world. I'm going to do it alphabetically, since I can't think of a more logical way. And yes, this is likely to take me a decade or two even if I actually keep up the momentum to go from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

ANYWAY, here is a collection of Afghan themed books:

Fiction (by Afghan authors):

The Kite Runner
A Thousand Splendid Suns

Non-Fiction (purely about Afghanistan):

Afghanistan
Afghanistan: A Modern History
Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep
A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan
Before the Taliban: Living with War, Hoping for Peace
Behind the Burqa: Our Life in Afghanistan and How We Escaped to Freedom
The Bookseller of Kabul
A Brief History of Afghanistan
Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan
The Places in Between
The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan
The Sleeping Buddha: The Story of Afghanistan Through the Eyes of One Family
Three Women of Herat: A Memoir of Life, Love and Friendship in Afghanistan
An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan

NB this is just a selection of non-fiction, if you like "misery memoirs" there are a shed-load of them out there. That isn't to belittle the difficulties the people of Afghanistan faced under the Taliban, but the list could go on forever and that is the closest I can come to defining what genre they all fall into.


The final category is for books which have a more tenuous link such as fiction set in Afghanistan, but not by Afghan authors, or non-fiction about the region rather than just this country.

Others:

Born Under a Million Shadows
Flashman
The Man Who Would Be King
News from No Man's Land: Reporting the World
The Photographer
Shooting Kabul
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time


Please add any suggestions below if you have another ideas that would give me/us more options.

When I say me/us, I really hope it will be us. I'd really like it if others would read along with me (even if not the same books at the same time, it'd be great to have any company on the journey) feel free to join in just on a country that particularly fascinates you. Just pick any book from the list, or nominate a new one that fits the country.

OK, I can't start quite yet (because I don't have the book yet) but I'm hoping to start with A Thousand Splendid Suns over this weekend. Anyone else with me?

Elise wrote: "OK, I can't start quite yet (because I don't have the book yet) but I'm hoping to start with A Thousand Splendid Suns over this weekend. Anyone else with me?"

That'd be a no then? :(

Elise wrote: "Elise wrote: "OK, I can't start quite yet (because I don't have the book yet) but I'm hoping to start with A Thousand Splendid Suns over this weekend. Anyone else with me?"

That'd be a no then? :("

I plan to join in for some of your treks, just not this one. I'm sure many others will be joining you as well - don't loose heart, this is a great idea!

P.S. When you get to Zimbabwe I have a great recommendation! Assuming the world hasn't sunk into a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by mole people by then.

Whitney wrote: "Elise wrote: "Elise wrote: "OK, I can't start quite yet (because I don't have the book yet) but I'm hoping to start with A Thousand Splendid Suns over this weekend. Anyone else with me?"

That'd b..."

If I ever get there, I'll happily read a book by a Zimbabwean mole-person!

I'm not upset or anything about no-one showing much interest in this one - I didn't think Afghanistan necessarily had the draw that some other destinations did. It was only the popularity of Khaled Hosseini's works that made me think I might get any takers.

Current plan is to spend no more than a month on any one country (overseas territory/disputed... er... landmass... whatever they all are!) but to try to cram a good few reads from each country into that month. It's not like I don't have the time for it, I'm all but housebound due to illness and likely to continue that way for some time, so me and my trusty kindle will go armchair travelling.

So in about 22 or 23 years I should get to Zimbabwe, unless the mole people eat my kindle first!

Forget the mole people. Zombies will have eaten them by then :)
Ahhhhh....... bring on the zombocalypse!

Ruby wrote: "Forget the mole people. Zombies will have eaten them by then :)
Ahhhhh....... bring on the zombocalypse!"

And then all works of literature will be re-written like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (I hope not; I read a chapter of a friend's copy once, quite a good idea, really badly executed).

I prefer to think the literature will be more along the lines of Brains: A Zombie Memoir.

Ah, peace and harmony between all peoples living and undead! I'll have to tbr it.

As long as that doesn't include zombie birds! My darling cat has brought me a feathery little "present" this morning. Believe me, "darling" was not what he was being called when I found it! :(

Elise wrote: "Ah, peace and harmony between all peoples living and undead! I'll have to tbr it.

As long as that doesn't include zombie birds! My darling cat has brought me a feathery little "present" this m..."

That only shows how much you are loved by your cat!

Well even though I've always known it's a sign of affection, I'll be damned if I'm going to go along with the suggestion that I pretend to eat the next dead goldfinch!

Enough discussion of cats and dead birds! Now onto A Thousand Splendid Suns.

I'm not far enough in to make too much comment, but it occurs that it is a brave person who writes a novel that focuses almost solely on member(s) of the opposite sex. As far as I'm concerned he does it very well, I just wanted to say it is a courageous choice by any writer.

In the first few chapters Nana seems to let her resentment about how her life has turned out completely overwhelm her love of her daughter and, as far as I can see the only thing that would make her happier, would be for 100% of Mariam's love and loyalty to be given to her. The only time she gives Mariam approval is when she insults her half-brother - demonstating her alignment with Nana against Jalil. While Nana stopping Mariam going to school is couched in such bitter terms and can only garner resentment from Mariam, there seems to be an element of true protectiveness there too - perhaps she is right, but by doing so she is probably condemning her daughter to a life at least as hard and disappointing as her own.

Jalil seems to Mariam like the most wonderful father imaginable but not necessarily so perfect to the reader. Although Nana's degree of resentment makes her unfair to Mariam and Jalil, what is true is that he has "banished" them to this remote little hut. In such a male-dominated society he easily could have insisted on having his daughter brought up near to him, not isolated and deprived. He could have tried to compensate for Mariam's status as a "harami" and instead keeps she and Nana "out of sight, out of mind" as this is more convenient for him. He's a good dad when he's there, but Nana is essentially right that he has not done the honourable thing by them and taken responsibility for his daughter and ex-mistress.

Mariam, starved for affection by her cold resentful mother, sees her kind and (on a once a week basis) loving father as, more or less, perfect and adores him. Her mother she comes to resent (inevitably) for being such a bitter and twisted harridan. Mariam is already learning the endurance that her mother wishes to teach her - as a child having one parent bitterly (and vocally) resentful of the other is a real burden to bear. It is therefore inevitable that Mariam chooses her father's version of the past unquestioningly over her mother's.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the first 4 chapters.

NB If people want to follow this thread and haven't read the book yet but want to, let me know and I'll add in spoiler alert codes. I only haven't because, as far as I know, I'm currently the only person doing this challenge. Don't worry, I'm not arrogant enough to think that anyone is really likely to follow this religiously, but I also don't want to spoil the story for anyone who's bored enough to want to read my ramblings!

Wow! I didn't realise that, when I briefly stopped reading to "jot" down my thoughts (above), I was actually on the brink of a major turning point in the novel (though the regular references in the first 4 chapters to "until she was 15, Mariam..." did give a good indication that there would be a change of circumstances at that age).

However, it did seem, after reading her wish to have more to do with her half-brothers and sisters and see more of her father, at the end of chapter 4, that we were about to see Mariam rebel and leave the confines of her banishment. She's 15, she's alone with a mother whose fierce resentment, almost hatred, of Mariam seems as strong as her love, so the time is ripe for her to try to escape the confines of the kolba. She certainly succeeds!

I'm starting to see a theme in the book about the truth, who tells it, who doesn't and in this initial stage how everything is “black and white� during childhood and the huge disillusionment that comes with adulthood and the realisation that everything is actually shades of grey (Mariam hasn't got that far yet and Nana's hatred of virtually everyone and everything stopped her being able to see that). While we can see that in ignoring his “harami� daughter at the front door is the moral cowardice of a man who probably usually gets all his own way, for Mariam it is the ultimate betrayal � her perfect father doesn't want her.

(Let's be honest, “moral cowardice� is a mild term for letting your 15-year-old daughter sleep outside on the pavement no matter how you justify it to yourself, but I'll leave it for now).

Having had her whole world-view destroyed by realising that her father only wants and loves her as long as she does not cause him any inconvenience, she gets home to find her whole world has truly been destroyed. Not only has her father failed her, but her mother has committed the ultimate betrayal of a child. From the start of the book, Nana clearly isn't the most stable of personalities, but she has done this in a way that ensures that her daughter is likely to feel horrendous guilt about her mother's suicide for the rest of her life.

In Mariam's own eyes she must truly be an orphan at this point; her mother is dead and the father she idealised has turned out to be so far from the person she thought he was that she can barely recognise him.

We all know what the road to hell is paved with...

Well, I was going to stop and make notes about the book as I went on - kind of lost momentum on that pretty quickly - though it is a tribute the the book. The story was vividly told, and was both pacey and gripping (if horrifying at points � I felt almost sick when they got arrested for trying to run away, knowing what they were likely to have to go back to). It drew me in so much that I wasn't prepared to put it down to start writing commentary. (Besides that, it's probably just as well I didn't continue with posting comments every few chapters - I was starting to sound like Cliff Notes Lite!)

As far as trying to read books to help enlighten me about other countries, I think this was a good place to start. It wasn't heavy handed, but it kept you "up to date", roughly, with what was happening in the country (between approximately 1974 and 2003) but it wove that into the story, so usually it didn't have the jarring stop of "now it's time for exposition" that I've sometimes found in other books.

After reading the whole book, my only criticism was that the ending was a little too neat and sweet. I know this book has garnered some criticism for pandering too much to Western stereotypes but this was the only time I felt that this was overt. Goodness knows, I wanted Laila to have the happy ever after, but this wasn't a fairy tale and I couldn't help feeling that there was an implication that now that their country had been invaded by "the good guys" that was making everything OK (which it REALLY didn't). Of course, Hosseini is essentially American, so it's not overly surprising he would subscribe to the American view of the situation. But, come on, after years of drought, it even started raining again! (Of course, that may well be 100% true, I don't know, but it was only a coincidence, not a bi-product of Afghanistan being invaded and occupied, yet it got lumped in with all of the positives of that).

I'll mull it over for a while and then get a review done. But even with a slightly disappointing final chapter, it's definitely 5*!

Last thoughts: The book has also made me reflect on my own reaction to women in burqas. My experience of working in a predominantly Muslim area of East London, in the past, was that the tiny minority of women I saw in burqa (or niqab), would not make “eye contact� with me � i.e. would keep their head down or not turn their mesh (or eye slit) towards a totally uncovered non-Muslim woman. (When I say uncovered, I mean my head, I always dressed respectfully).

Was my conception of this situation 100% accurate, or was there an element of my own perception of women wearing burqas, I now wonder. While Hosseini shows us how much Mariam initially shrinks from the idea of a burqa, I know some devout Muslim women embrace the idea. However, Hosseini also vividly shows us two of the individuals behind the burqas, which makes me ask if I let my discomfort at the idea of the burqa, as a means of subjugating women, actually stop me seeing the person?

Hmm, this is starting to turn into a blog. Perhaps that's what I should be doing with it rather than adding my rather dull reflections to this thread. Just a thought.

I now have half a dozen books on/set in Afghanistan, from the list and although I was going to read Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep another 3 cheap 2nd hand books came from amazon today - I went into enthusiasm fuelled overkill a week or so ago (and this was me, who was going to try to stick to kindle books because I'm running out of storage space - oh well...).

I really invested a lot into A Thousand Splendid Suns and I don't know if I'm prepared to be put through the wringer again this quickly by what appears to be another story of horror and despair. Maybe I'll go for An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan instead.

I finally got round to writing a proper review of A Thousand Splendid Suns here (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) and I've totally lost the plot when it comes to the reading one fiction and one non-fiction book.

Instead I started Flashman (from the "other" list) having been told years ago by a friend what a great series it was. I read Tom Brown's Schooldays in my early teens and was quite keen on the idea of a humourous series based on the bully from that book, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Not so great so far - I see the humour in it, but the young Flashman has just beaten up a woman who was fighting him to prevent him raping her, which kind of lost me altogether and that's only in the second or third chapter. Thinking I might give it another couple of chapters, and if she manages to take a fitting revenge, then I'll be happy about it and keep going, otherwise, it has permanently soured me on the book and the series. Good chance I'll never even get him as far as Afghanistan.

Nearly finished The Kite Runner. I suppose now that I've (almost) read both of Hosseini's what has struck me is that Afghanistan has now been at war (official or unofficial, in the last few years) for my entire lifetime (I was born in 1978 a few months after the wars there began) and to me, that is unimaginable - aren't I lucky!

So far, The Kite Runner has had less impact on me as A Thousand Splendid Suns, perhaps because I was more prepared for it, perhaps because Amir escapes the situation and does not experience the war up close day to day, unlike Mariam and Laila - and, of course, as a man he does not have the same horrors to face in the home. As for writing, it feels slightly less polished, but has still gripped me and submersed me in the story the way the other did.

Just finished The Kite Runner. I have to say I hope Hosseini writes more books as I think he really is a gifted story teller. While a couple of novels certainly can't make one feel one knows a country or its people, I do feel like I know more about them than when I started this challenge.

Again, I'll write a review of The Kite Runner when I've had time to give it a bit more thought. Now I just have to finally make a firm decision about my non-fiction choice.

If anyone else is interested, here is a fascinating short documentary, made by an Afghan journalist, about gender roles and a "hidden" custom which seems to be fairly commonly practised in families without sons in Afghanistan:

My Review of The Kite Runner:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep is a compelling tale, but an atrociously written book. I am coming very close to literally launching the book across the room at times. This author makes Dan Brown look like a literary genius.

And yet it's a story that should be heard. All I can hope is that it read better in the original German! Will post a review soon, thankfully it isn't long.