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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Come Back To Afghanistanby Said Hyder Akbar
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:The intimate and riveting chronicle of an extraordinarily courageous Afghan-American teenager coming of age in post-9/11 Afghanistan.
Building on two acclaimed radio documentaries aired on This American Life, Hyder Akbar tells how his ordinary suburban California life was turned upside-down after 9/11. Hyder’s father, a scion of an Afghan political family, sold his business—a hip-hop clothing store in Oakland—and left for Afghanistan, where he became President Hamid Karzai’s chief spokesman and later, the governor of Kunar, a rural province. Obsessed since youth with a country he had never even visited, seventeen-year-old Hyder convinced his father to let him join him on three successive summers. Working alongside his father at the presidential palace and in Kunar has given Hyder a rare front-row seat at the creation of democratic government in Afghanistan. In Come Back to Afghanistan, Hyder interweaves his personal journey—a teenager struggling with his identity in his parents’ homeland—with a dramatic behind-the-scenes account of political and civilian life in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Uncommonly wise and insightful, Hyder travels from palaces to prisons and from Kabul to the borderlands, revealing Afghanistan as readers have never seen or understood it before. Review:"Akbar's refreshingly unsentimental reminiscences of visiting his father's homeland as a teen make for an intriguing portrait of Afghanistan at a time of significant transition. On 9/11, Akbar, who was born in Peshawar in 1984 but grew up in the U.S., was living near Oakland, Calif., where his father ran a clothing store. After the attack, the elder Akbar, a descendant of an Afghan political family, returned to his country to take a job as President Hamid Karzai's chief spokesman and, later, as governor of Kunar, a rural province. The author visited his father for three successive summers, and the result is this account, a closeup view of the creation of the country's post-Taliban democratic government, told from a perspective that's impressively both insider and objective. Akbar reports on chats with cabinet ministers and warlords, and sketches the lay of the land, visiting both sumptuous Kabul palaces as well as bombed-out villages. His youth and curiosity send him on some dangerous adventures (he retraces a mountain route between Afghanistan and Pakistan used by fleeing members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban), and that youthful flavor also infuses the writing with a hip stream-of-consciousness that is by turns funny, insightful and, occasionally, breathtaking. Agent, Jud Laghi. (Nov.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Book News Annotation:In 2002, Akbar, then 17 and a high school senior in suburban
California, skipped his prom and graduation and traveled to his
parents' native Afghanistan for the first time. The historic events
and changes Akbar witnessed over the next three summers became an
award-winning series of radio documentaries and now this memoir, in
which Akbar blends his own story with that of the political and
civilian drama taking place in post-Taliban Afghanistan. The volume
has no index.
Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Review:"Straddling cultures, Akbar presents an intimate portrait of a nation at a crossroads." Synopsis:Building on two acclaimed radio documentaries aired on "This American Life," this intimate and riveting chronicle is delivered by an extraordinarily courageous Afghan-American teenager coming of age in post 9/11 Afghanistan. About the AuthorSaid Hyder Akbar is currently a college student. He is also the co-director and founder of his own non-governmental organization, Wadan Afghanistan, which has rebuilt schools and constructed pipe systems in rural Kunar province. He is now twenty. Susan Burton is a contributing editor of This American Life, and a former editor at Harper’s. Her writing appears in the New York Times Magazine. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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