When the Moon is Low Paperback – 30 July 2015
Nadia Hashimi . William Morrow . English
In Kabul we meet Fereiba, a schoolteacher, and her husband, Mahmoud, a man whose love for her was greater than any love she’d ever known. But Fereiba’s middle-class world of education, work and comfortable family life implodes when the Taliban rises to power. Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new regime and is murdered by local henchmen.Forced to flee Taliban-controlled Kabul with her three children,Fereiba has only one option: find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister’s family in England, who have offered them asylum.With forged papers and help from kind strangers, they cross the mountains into Iran by night. Exhausted and brokenhearted but undefeated, Fereiba manages to smuggle them as far as Greecebut in a busy market square, their fate takes another turn for the worse when her teenage son Saleem becomes separated from the rest of the family. Faced with an almost unimaginable choice,Fereiba makes the desperate decision to continue on to London with her daughter and baby while Saleem falls into the shadowy underground network of undocumented Afghans who haunt the streets of Europe ‘s capitals. From the refugee camps of Greece, through Rome and even Paris, Fereiba and Saleem struggle to reunite, to survive and to find a place where they can begin to reconstruct their lives. Like The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, this is a heartfelt revelation of a novel, extremely readable and thought-provoking, with characters who haunt the reader long after the last page is turned. And yes, like Pearl, this is a page-turner that ends happily.
Categories: Action & Adventure
About the Author
Nadia Hashimi is a pediatrician turned novelist who draws on her Afghan culture to craft internationally bestselling books for adults as well as young readers. Her novels span generations and continents, taking on themes like forced migration, conflict, poverty, misogyny, colonialism, and addiction. She enjoys conversations with readers of all ages in libraries, book festivals, classrooms, and living rooms. With translations in seventeen languages, she’s connected with readers around the world. Nadia was born and raised in New York and New Jersey. Both her parents were born in Afghanistan and left in the early 1970s, before the Soviet invasion. Her mother, granddaughter of a notable Afghan poet, traveled to Europe to obtain a Master’s degree in civil engineering and her father came to the United States, where he worked hard to fulfill his American dream and build a new, brighter life for his immediate and extended family. Nadia was fortunate to be surrounded by a large family of aunts, uncles and cousins, keeping the Afghan culture an integral part of their daily lives. Nadia graduated from Brandeis University with degrees in Middle Eastern Studies and Biology. She studied medicine in Brooklyn, New York, and then completed her pediatric residency training at NYU and Bellevue hospitals before moving to Maryland with her husband. On days off from a busy emergency room and after years of avid reading, she began crafting stories that drew on her heritage and the complex experiences of Afghans. In 2003, she made her first trip to Afghanistan with her parents who had not returned to their homeland since leaving in the 1970s. She continues to serve on boards of organizations committed to educating and nurturing Afghanistan’s most vulnerable children and empowering the female leaders of tomorrow. She is a member of the US-Afghan Women’s Council and an advisor to Kallion, an organization that seeks to elevate leadership through humanities. Locally, she serves as a Montgomery County health care commissioner and organizing committee member of the Gaithersburg Book Festival. She and her husband are the beaming parents of four curious, rock star children, an African Grey parrot named Nickel who reminds the kids to brush their teeth, and Justice, the hungriest Rhodesian Ridgeback you’ve ever met. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter or via her website (www.nadiahashimi.com) to learn more or request a virtual book club visit. She's quite social.
