Storyteller's Daughter

Born in Britain, Saira Shah was inspired by her father's dazzling stories to rediscover the now lost life their forebears knew for 900 years within sight of orchards, snow-topped mountains, and the minarets of Kabul. This is Saira — part sophisticated and sensitive Western liberal, part fearless (even fierce) life-gulping Afghan, falling in love with her ancestral myth, chasing Afghanistan. Saira, at 21, becoming a correspondent at the front during the war between the Soviets and the Afghan resistance. Then Saira, self-imprisoned in a burqa, risking her life to film Beneath the Veil — her acclaimed record of the devastation of women's lives by the Taliban. Saira discovering her extended family, discovering a world of gorgeous family ritual, of community, of male primacy, of arranged marriages, finding at last the (now war-ravaged) family seat, discovering at last what she wants and what she rejects of her compelling heritage.

The Washington Post

The Storyteller's Daughter is the work of a confident yet modest and self-effacing woman who is drawn to danger and whose greatest desire is to understand her incompatible worlds of East and West.—Jonathan Yardley

Saira Shah lives in London and is a freelance journalist. She was born in Britain of an Afghan family. She first visited Afghanistan at age 21 and worked there for three years as a freelance journalist, covering the guerrilla war against the Soviet occupiers. Later, working for Britain's Channel 4 News, she covered some of the world's most troubled spots, including Algeria, Kosovo, and Kinshasa, as well as Baghdad and other parts of the Middle East. Her documentaries Beneath the Veil and Unholy War have both been broadcast on CNN several times.