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Storyteller's Daughter

Name: Storyteller's Daughter
Author: Saira Shah
ISBN: 9780060890421

by Saira Shah

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Overview

The startling memoir of a young woman shaped by two dramatically disparate worlds

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.

Synopsis

The startling memoir of a young woman shaped by two dramatically disparate worlds

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

About the Author, Saira Shah

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.

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Editorials

The New York Times

The Storyteller's Daughter can most accurately be described as a memoir, but while it considers Shah's upbringing in a distinguished expatriate Afghan family, it also explores the potency of Afghan mythology and how, on repeated visits over a number of years (from the era of Soviet domination to that of the Taliban), she came to distinguish the myths from the reality of that spectacular but now ravaged land. Brilliant and moving, hers is a book that can make uncomfortable reading for Westerners whose countries have periodically dabbled in the region, but only when it has suited them and for their own benefit. — Geoffrey Moorehouse

The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Born in England and raised on her father's fantastic stories of an Afghanistan she had never known, Shah spends her adult life searching for a mythic place of beauty. "Any Western adult might have told me that this was an exile's tale of a lost Eden: the place you dream about, to which you can never return. But even then, I wasn't going to accept that." What she finds is a place ravaged by decades of war, poverty and, later, religious puritanism. Shah first visits Afghanistan in 1986 as a war correspondent at the remarkable age of 21 and later returns as the documentary producer of Beneath the Veil, an expos of life under the Taliban that predated the national interest in the embattled country. Her journey forces her to reconcile the vast disparities between fact and fiction, the world she has pieced together from her father's tales and the reality she glimpses from behind the grille of the Taliban-imposed burqa. Shah weaves legends and traditional sayings into her text, lending a greater context to her expectations and experiences. She also offers a piecemeal history of Afghanistan to accompany the accounts of her travels, but for readers unfamiliar with the many years of political tumult Afghanistan has suffered, the history may not be thorough enough. Most compelling are the characters she encounters and their indomitable spirit, including a woman with 10 children who asks her about a "magic" pill to prevent pregnancy, and her husband, whose intense machismo is not enough to save him from the war. Agent, Patrick Walsh. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT

Saira Shah grew up in England hearing stories of her father's native Afghanistan as if it were the Garden of Eden. As she grew up, she realized that it was a country at war, but she still wanted to visit it and see if she could find the country of her ancestors. Instead she found a country of poverty and war. Her travels as a journalist under a burqa enabled her to hear the stories of Afghan storytellers like her father and to get to know the country. In doing so, she was able to reconcile the eastern and western halves of herself. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Random House, Anchor, 254p., Ages 15 to adult.
—Nola Theiss

Library Journal

In this intriguing memoir, Shah superbly weaves oral traditions with history to describe life as an Afghani raised in the West but with solid roots in the East. Her book is more than just an autobiography; it is the story of Afghanistan itself. We learn about Shah's documentary work in Afghanistan, the power of myth through which Afghanistan's tradition is born, the brave work of peoples and organizations such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), and the West's (and even East's) misconceptions regarding Muslim teachings. Currently living in London, Shah works as a freelance journalist and first traveled to Afghanistan at age 21, during the Soviet occupation. Later, at considerable risk, she bundled herself in a burqu and filmed the documentary Beneath the Veil, which aired to great acclaim on CNN. This rare personal and historic account of the region is a great addition to public and academic libraries.-Ethan Pullman, Univ. of Pittsburgh Lib. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Adventure-filled account of an intrepid young British-Afghan woman’s search for cultural identity. Shah, whose 2001 television documentary Beneath the Veil examined the realities of Afghan women’s lives under the Taliban, asserts that she has within her two incompatible people: a middle-class liberal pacifist and a "rapacious robber baron" who "glories in risk." She was raised in England on her father’s stories about a romantic Afghanistan and its brave, noble people. At 17, visiting her extended Afghan family in Peshawar, she saw that her father’s stories represented a male vision; for Afghan women there was a different reality. She returned to the region at age 21 after studying Persian and Arabic, intent on becoming a journalist. Her Western side determined to discover the truth about Afghanistan, Shah recalls; her Afghan side still yearned after her father’s myths. With the Soviet Union backing the Afghanistan communist government and the US supporting the mujahideen, Shah found no romantic fairyland, but a war-torn outpost of Cold War conflict. Eye-opening experiences traveling with the mujahideen led her to question whether their fabled concept of honor was not more about appearance than principle. When, as a freelance journalist, she investigated stories that the rebels were selling Iran their US-supplied Stingers, hand-held anti-aircraft missiles capable of taking down Soviet jets, she came to doubt her father’s faith in the noble mujahideen and other long-held beliefs. Then her mentor, a gentle professor who personified the fairytale Afghanistan she longed to believe in, was murdered; soon afterward, she returned to the West. In a later chapter, Shah recounts her recent trip to asmall Afghan village in a fruitless attempt to help three girls featured in Beneath the Veil. This failure sharpened her realization that her two incompatible halves may never be reconciled. "Afghan has confounded me," she concludes, "just as it has always confounded the West." A powerful memoir and an unforgettable portrait of a land and a people. First printing of 100,000. Agent: Emma Parry/Carlisle & Co.