West of Kabul, East of New York - Hardcover

TAMIN ANSARY

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1405005610 ISBN 13: 9781405005616

Publisher: MACMILLAN, 2003

Synopsis

The day after the World Trade Center was destroyed, Tamim Ansary sent an anguished e-mail to twenty friends, discussing the attack from his perspective as an Afghan American. That message, spread via the internet, reached and touched millions of people around the world.
Now Ansary gives us 'West of Kabul, East of New York' a moving account of a life lived in two very different cultures, Islamic Afghanistan and the secular West.
Born of the first marriage between an Afghan man and an American woman, Ansary grew up in the 'lost world' of pre-war Kabul. When he emigrated America at age 16, he thought he was leaving Afghan culture behind forever. In 1979, however, at the height of the Iranian Revolution, his unresolved identity took him on a harrowing journey through the Islamic world. In the years that followed, he struggled with the emotional issues raised by the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the growing community in the United States, and the radical new ideology emerging Islam and with his own family.

About this title

About the Author

Tamim Ansary is the award-winning author of Destiny Disrupted and West of Kabul, East of New York. He has been a major contributing writer to several secondary-school history textbooks offering an Islamic perspective.

From Booklist

People sought solace and understanding online after the terrorist attacks of September 11, sending original e-mails and forwarding others, including, unbeknownst to the Afghan American who wrote it, an electrifying letter that made the crucial distinction between the Afghan people and the Taliban. So vivifying and unique was Ansary's missive, it quickly assumed the form of a global electronic chain letter, pushing this San Francisco-based children's book author and columnist for Encarta into the spotlight, where he appeared with the likes of Bill Moyers and Oprah. Now, writing once again with astonishing rapidity, clarity, and discernment, Ansary uses his compelling life story as a conduit for exactly the sort of insights into Afghanistan and the roots of Islamic terrorist groups that readers crave. As the son of an Afghan father and an American mother (the only American woman in Kabul when she arrived in 1945), Ansary embodies the East, the West, and the struggle between them. Born in 1948, he lived in Afghanistan until he was 16, and his radiant memories of that "lost world," a fluid and timeless realm of family (as in clan) and stories ("Instead of television, we had genealogy."), are redolent with a nurturing form of Islam, the opposite of extreme fundamentalist ideology. As Ansary conjures his boyhood, describes his student years in the U.S., chronicles his harrowing yet revelatory journey through various Islamic countries in 1980, and relives his painful break with his Islamic fundamentalist brother, he seeks to fathom and honor both facets of his bicultural heritage. Gracefully written and very powerful, Ansary's meditative memoir reaches deeper and illuminates more brightly than any news report or political analysis. Donna Seaman
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Edition details

• Publisher: MACMILLAN
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1405005610
• ISBN 13: 9781405005616
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304