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Sleeping Buddha, The

Hamida Ghafour

An evocative family memoir and unique portrait of Afghanistan from a young Afghan journalist

Hamida Ghafour's family fled Kabul after the Russian invasion. In 2003 she was sent back by the Telegraph to cover the country's reconstruction. She finds a place changed utterly from the world her parents had described and her grandmother -- an Afghan Virginia Woolf -- had written about. All around her is the West's first post-9/11 experiment with an Islamic democracy. But the people she meets reveal a different kind of nation building: the 'beautician without borders' whose school teaches women a new kind of independence; her cousin's determined parliamentary campaign; the archaeologist digging for his country's lost civilization in the form of a giant sleeping Buddha.

As she participates in her country's present, its elusive past and her family's own story come vividly together for Hamida. But only when she's standing by her grandmother's grave -- after a heavily escorted Chinook trip to the wildest corner of the land -- does she start to find her own place in it all.

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  • Classification : History
  • Pub Date : MAR 29, 2007
  • Imprint : Constable
  • Page Extent : 320
  • Binding : PB
  • ISBN : 9781845293130
  • Price : INR 699
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Hamida Ghafour

Hamida Ghafour's family left Afghanistan for Toronto in 1981 following the Soviet invasion. After working for Canada's national broadsheets she moved to London in September 2001 and was posted to Kabul by the Telegraph where she also covered events for the Globe and Mail and the Los Angeles Times. She now lives in London and covers Islamic affairs for various international publications.

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