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BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
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Description
A spellbinding memoir of survival and courage from Afghanistan's most popular female politician.
"The story of Koofi's life is almost cinematic in its juxtaposition of triumph and tragedy, hope and despair." -- Maclean's
"A powerful and moving reminder that in the midst of Afghanistan's decades of struggle, hope and humanity prevail. Letters to My Daughters is a compulsively good read." -- Samantha Nutt, founder of War Child North America
"If you want to know what life has been like for women in Afghanistan, and what it could be like, Letters to My Daughters is a must-read." -- Globe and Mail
"Koofi's story illustrates what lies beneath the chaos of this multi-factional, multilingual, complex nation caught in the current struggle between foreign nations...and the vicious religious zealots known as the Taliban." -- Ottawa Citizen
On the day Fawzia Koofi was born, her mother set her under the blazing Afghanistan sun to die. The nineteenth child of twenty-three in a family with seven wives, her mother did not want another daughter. Despite severe burns that lasted into her teenage years, Koofi survived and became the favourite child.
In Letters to My Daughters, Koofi tells her remarkable life story, one marked by a fierce passion to better the world around her. Koofi's father was an incorruptible politician strongly attached to Afghan tradition. When he was murdered by the mujahideen, her illiterate mother decided to send the ten-year-old girl to school, and as the civil war raged, Koofi dodged bullets and snipers to attend class, determined to be the first person in her family to receive an education.
Koofi went on to marry a man she loved and they had two cherished daughters, Shohra and Shaharzad. Tragically, the arrival of the Taliban spelled an end to her freedom. Outraged and deeply saddened by the injustice she saw around her, and by the tainting of her Islamic faith, she discovered politics herself.
Koofi opens each chapter with a letter she has written to her two daughters in which she passes on her wisdom about justice and dignity, not knowing whether she will survive to see them again. In writing Letters to My Daughters, Koofi has created a fresh take on Afghanistan society and Islam, and a gripping account of a life lived under the most harrowing of circumstances.
