Author Description

In a moving tale of oppression and courageous defiance, sixteen-year-old Latifa tells her story of growing up in war torn Afghanistan. She was a prisoner in her own home as the Taliban wreaked havoc on the lives of Afghan girls and women. The regime banned women from working, from schools, from public life, even from leaving their homes without a male relative. Female faces were outlawed as the burka, or head-to-toe veil, became mandatory. Like a contemporary Anne Frank, Latifa was forced to observe, absorb, and make sense of what was happening to women, to her country, to her family, from the confines of her four walls. In 2001, after escaping to Pakistan, then to Paris, with her parents, Latifa's future finally opened up. Written during exile, this book is an extraordinarily powerful account of a teenager's life under terrible circumstances and a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit.