The Pearl That Broke its Shell by Nadia Hashimi

In 2007, nine-year-old Rahima lives with her parents and four sisters in Kabul. Her father is increasingly dysfunctional, and the family is barely surviving. With no brothers to protect them, the girls can seldom leave the house, even to attend school.  Her mother decides she should become a bacha posh, a girl who dresses as a boy so that she can go to the market, and escort her sisters when they go out.  This is an ancient Afghan custom which allows a girl to dress as, and be treated like, a boy until she is of marriageable age.

Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this custom. A century earlier, her great-great grandmother, Shekiba, left orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way. As a young girl, Sekiba was scarred by kitchen oil and reviled by her family. She eventually made her way to the king’s palace in Kabul, dressing as a man to guard his harem.

For a few years, Rahima enjoys freedoms unavailable to most girls. But when she is 13 she is forced to marry a vicious warlord who decides he wants her for his wife.  She finds strength in her aunt’s stories of her ancestor Shekiba. Alternating between the two, Hashimi weaves a compelling tale of two women, separated by a century, who seem to share a destiny.

Recommended for those who enjoyed 'The Kite Runner'.

469 pages

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

This novel, set in Afghanistan, begins with a father telling his two small children a folk story about a child being stolen from his parents by a div (ogre).  The stolen child is found by his father, who has to choose between bringing the child home to poverty and want, or leaving him in a wondrous, magical place surrounded by riches.

The day after telling this tale, the father sets off for Kabul, pulling his young daughter in a cart.  There he gives her to a wealthy couple who can't have children. They will give her a good home, and they will give him money to help his family survive the grinding poverty that killed his baby the year before, and that he is afraid will kill the rest of them without some help.

But the girl's older brother is heartbroken; the two of them have been bonded together since her birth. There is a hole in both their lives that nothing ever quite fills. The story spans half a century, and spans continents. It is a series of stories within a story, and ends in a bittersweet reunion.


417 pages

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson

In 1993, Greg Mortenson attempted to climb K2, the world’s second tallest mountain. He fell ill, and was cared for by villagers in Korphe, Pakistan, for seven weeks. They saved his life, and in return he promised to build them a school for their children.  That project grew into the Central Asia Institute, a charitable organization that continues to build schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan.  The book asserts that the way to fight Islamic extremism in the region is through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls.

Since this book became a bestseller in 2006, Greg Mortenson has been accused of fabricating this account, and of using money raised for the Central Asia Institute for his own expenses. However, the book itself is still a powerful reminder that poverty and ignorance can best be combatted by education and friendship, not bombs and drones.

376 pages