The Lovers: Afghanistan's Romeo and Juliet, the True Story of How They Defied Their Families - Softcover

Nordland, Rod

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062442163 ISBN 13: 9780062442161

Publisher: Harper Large Print, 2016

Synopsis

A riveting, real-life equivalent of The Kite Runner—an astonishingly powerful and profoundly moving story of a young couple willing to risk everything for love that puts a human face on the ongoing debate about women’s rights in the Muslim world.

Zakia and Ali were from different tribes, but they grew up on neighboring farms in the hinterlands of Afghanistan. By the time they were young teenagers, Zakia, strikingly beautiful and fiercely opinionated, and Ali, shy and tender, had fallen in love. Defying their families, sectarian differences, cultural conventions, and Afghan civil and Islamic law, they ran away together only to live under constant threat from Zakia’s large and vengeful family, who have vowed to kill her to restore the family’s honor. They are still in hiding.

Despite a decade of American good intentions, women in Afghanistan are still subjected to some of the worst human rights violations in the world. Rod Nordland, then the Kabul bureau chief of the New York Times, had watched these abuses unfold for years when he came upon Zakia and Ali, and has not only chronicled their plight, but has also shepherded them from danger.

The Lovers will do for women’s rights generally what Malala’s story did for women’s education. It is an astonishing story about self-determination and the meaning of love that illustrates, as no policy book could, the limits of Western influence on fundamentalist Islamic culture and, at the same time, the need for change.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Zakia and Ali grew up as neighbors and fell in love from afar. Defying their families and Afghan custom, the young lovers—both from different Muslim sects—eloped and went into hiding. When Rod Nordland came upon them, he felt obligated, having shared their story in the pages of the New York Times, to help them to safety—but there was a limit to how well he could protect them.

Despite more than a decade of American good intentions, women in Afghanistan are still subjected to some of the worst human rights violations in the world. Rod Nordland tells a compelling tale of forbidden love, governmental bungling, and reckless disregard for basic human rights, and illustrates the degree to which mysogyny persists in traditional Afghan culture. The Lovers is a story of one couple’s unshakable self-determination and the irrepressibility of human feeling in the face of a shockingly repressive society. 

About the Author:

Rod Nordland is currently a correspondent-at-large for the New York Times. Nordland has shared a Pulitzer Prize for news, was a finalist for a Pulitzer in international reporting, and has worked as a foreign correspondent in over 150 countries.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Large Print
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0062442163
• ISBN 13: 9780062442161
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 592