2007-11-10 Not a good book on Afghanistan

One would have to either question Ms. Shakib's intentions while writing this book or question her sources. As an Afghanistani I found finding a lot of what she wrote suspect. She wanted to mention all the extreme casing ranging from the times of the Soviet to the Taliban era, which would cover a lot, too much in fact. In doing so, she messed up the timeline of the events and even the ages of some of the characters. The historical accuracy is off as well - though the events of what she wrote about are in fact true i.e. Soviets, Mujaheddin, Taliban, etc. there were a few things that she wrote during these eras that did not make sense - giving the idea that perhaps her sources were either lying to her or she filled in gaps without doing her own research.

Somtimes she would go on talking about or referring to a character without giving them a name, even a fake name to protect the identity of the person. It becomes tiresome to have to continuously read "tea house owner" or "this sister" or "that sister." Not only does it belittle the reader but it also downgrades the characters themselves to the point where they are just faceless identities who are not important.

A very important issue that she fails to even mention is the ethnic issue in Afghanistan. She calls everyone "Afghan" and goes on talk about Afghan this and Afghan that. In Afghanistan, there are many different ethnicities from Tajik, Pashtun, Uzbek, Hazara, and more and it has always been a major issue in the country. The ethnic issue was not mentioned at all.

What Ms. Shakib succeeded in creating is a book pushed by the organization of RAWA which has brainwashed the author, using her to promote their own agendas. It was extremely boring and though there are a few good lines sporadically throughout the book they were lost in the midst of all the inaccuracy and questionable details.

If you would like to read a good book on Afghanistan that is much closer to capturing the real events then I would recommend Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.