The sleeping Buddha
Subtitle: the story of Afghanistan through the eyes of one family
By: Hamida Ghafour
Publisher: Constable
Published: 2007
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9781845293130
Subjects: History; Family; Description and travel
Description: "Hamida Ghafour and her family fled Kabul in 1981 when the Russians invaded. In this memoir, she tells how she went back in 2003 as a journalist to cover the country's post-9/11 reconstruction." "As Hamida is drawn deeper into her country's present, other members of her family come to life for us - her great-grandfather the Sufi mystic, her poetess grandmother who urged women to unveil, her great-uncle who wrote the first democratic constitution, her brave cousin Bahodine who paid for his views with his life. Her parents and their student days of hamburgers, hunting trips with American hippies and searches for the perfect pomegranate. In her family's past she finds the story of Afghanistan itself." "She finds its future in people like the Midwestern beautician teaching women a new kind of independence, her cousin the parliamentary candidate and the archaeologist digging for his country's lost civilization - in the form of a giant Sleeping Buddha."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [323]-325) and index.