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Macmillan
October 2013
On Sale: October 1, 2013
256 pages ISBN: 0230342213 EAN: 9780230342217 Kindle: B00CGFCEDS Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Few westerners will ever be able to understand Muslim or
Afghan society unless they are part of a Muslim family.
Twenty years old and in love, Phyllis Chesler, a
Jewish-American girl from Brooklyn, embarked on an adventure
that has lasted for more than a half-century. In 1961, when
she arrived in Kabul with her Afghan bridegroom, authorities
took away her American passport. Chesler was now the
property of her husband’s family and had no rights of
citizenship. Back in Afghanistan, her husband, a wealthy,
westernized foreign college student with dreams of reforming
his country, reverted to traditional and tribal customs.
Chesler found herself unexpectedly trapped in a posh
polygamous family, with no chance of escape. She fought
against her seclusion and lack of freedom, her Afghan
family’s attempts to convert her from Judaism to Islam, and
her husband’s wish to permanently tie her to the country
through childbirth. Drawing upon her personal diaries,
Chesler recounts her ordeal, the nature of gender
apartheid—and her longing to explore this beautiful,
ancient, and exotic country and culture. Chesler nearly died
there but she managed to get out, returned to her studies in
America, and became an author and an ardent activist for
women’s rights throughout the world. An American Bride in
Kabul is the story of how a naïve American girl learned to
see the world through eastern as well as western eyes and
came to appreciate Enlightenment values. This dramatic tale
re-creates a time gone by, a place that is no more, and
shares the way in which Chesler turned adversity into a
passion for world-wide social, educational, and political
reform.
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