My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird, 18 Afghan Women
My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird, 18 Afghan Women
2 Rating(s)
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird
New Fiction by Afghan Women

Author: 18 Afghan Women

Narrator: Sitara Attaie

Unabridged: 6 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/18/2022


Synopsis

A landmark collection: the first anthology of short fiction by Afghan women that are "powerful, profound, and deeply moving" (Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees, a Reese's Book Club pick)

"My pen is the wing of a bird; it will tell you those thoughts we are not allowed to think, those dreams we are not allowed to dream."

Eighteen Afghan women living in, speaking about, and writing from the country itself tell stories that are powerful and illuminating, unique and universal - stories of family, work, childhood, friendship, war, gender identity, and cultural traditions. 

A woman's fortitude saves her village from disaster. A  teenager explores their identity in a moment of quiet.  A  tormented girl tries to find love through a horrific act. A headmaster makes his way to work, treading the fine line between life and death.

These and more original, vital, and unexpected stories hail from extraordinary voices rooted in Afghanistan's two main linguistic groups (Pashto and Dari), and were developed over two years through the writer development program Untold's Write Aghanistan Project.  My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird comes at a pivotal moment in Afghanistan's history, when these voices must be heard.

With an Introduction by [to come] and Afterword by Lucy Hannah, Founder and Director of Untold

 

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rosh (Off GR duty for a fortnight!) on August 04, 2023

In a Nutshell: A brilliant OwnVoices anthology, narrating stories about the ordinary citizens' lives in Afghanistan. Each story is written by a female Afghan author. There's no denying that life in Afghanistan has changed over the last decades. Hit by one political catastrophe after another, most Afg......more

Goodreads review by Emily on June 11, 2023

[URL not allowed] An extraordinary project. My Pen is the Wing of a Bird is a completely haunting collection of stories by Afghan women, who detail the bleak and harrowing world that they live in, as well as the world that they wish it to be. However, as the introduction states, th......more

Goodreads review by Maria on June 14, 2022

Definitely Not my Concept of Life Wanna know about Life in Afghanistan? Hmmmm… let me see… The other day, X went to a wedding where a suicide bomber, with an apparently clear schedule, decided to drop by… (Inspired by a real event) Y, who happens to be a famous news reporter, arrived from work complainin......more

Goodreads review by bookishcharli on March 04, 2022

If you want that will make you re-evaluate your life then this is it. The amount of reflecting I’ve done since finishing this book in insane, I know I am lucky enough to live a privileged life, but I really didn’t know just how bad some people’s lives could be. One of these women wrote her story in......more

Goodreads review by Tripfiction on March 13, 2022

Short Stories set in AFGHANISTAN The stories “...take us into the small but ever so significant minutiae of daily life”. Through tiny observations we, as readers, can identify with the plight of so many women in Afghanistan, whose daily lives are like our own, yet so significantly different in many –......more


Quotes

"Powerful, profound and deeply moving, new fiction by Afghan women writers will expand your mind and elevate your heart."—ELIF SHAFAK, author of The Island of Missing Trees, a 2021 Reese’s Book Club Pick

"Sometimes, life is having beautiful dreams in a nightmare. The authors of this book express their longing to escape a nightmare and build a liveable world. A liveable world for everyone, but especially for women at a time when their body and soul are being destroyed."—BURHAN SÖNMEZ, President of International PEN