APRIL 2021 - AudioFile
Mozhan Marno narrates this powerful story about secrets from the past that won't stay buried. Adopted from Afghanistan as a child, Sitara Zamani finds a new life in America and grows up to be a surgeon. Marno vividly captures Sitara's gritty determination to bury memories of fleeing Kabul, the only surviving member of her family. Listeners will be drawn into a complex plot that takes listeners from Afghanistan to America, from war to the operating room. This is international literature at its finest as told by an experienced narrator. Marno maximizes the drama throughout one woman's reckoning with her past. M.R. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
01/11/2021
A woman grapples with traumatic memories of the 1978 Afghanistan coup in Hashimi’s intimate if lackluster latest (after A House Without Windows). Precocious Sitara Zalmani, 10, spends her days in Kabul’s presidential palace, where her father is an adviser to the president. During the coup, Sitara’s family is murdered in front of her before a palace guard, Shair Nabi, whisks her to safety and foists her off on Antonia Shephard, an American embassy worker. Antonia, along with her mother, hatches a plan to use Sitara’s American-born, deceased sister’s birth certificate to bring her to the U.S. But things fall apart at customs, and Sitara winds up in a foster home. By 2008, Sitara, now Aryana, is an oncological surgeon in New York City and has reunited with Antonia. Her boyfriend, Adam, doesn’t know her full history and tries to tap her for help with fund-raising for his political career just as Shair unexpectedly shows up as a patient. With her relationship deteriorating and Shair’s reappearance bringing memories to the surface, Aryana returns to Afghanistan with Antonia in an attempt to find some peace. While Hashimi rushes through Aryana’s intervening years in the U.S., and the plot is fairly predictable, she does a good job developing Aryana’s character. Still, this one fails to leave a mark. Agent: Helen Heller, the Helen Heller Agency. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
Hashimi’s narrative is telenovela-good—daring adventurers, deadly secrets, family drama, the beloved dead, a politician-in-the-making, true love, and more.” — Booklist (starred review)
“The question of whether Sitara can go home again is the existential and physical journey Hashimi conjures, in a story at once surreal and deeply rooted in the history of Afghanistan’s modern turmoil and ancient enchantment.” — NPR
“A fascinating epic tale.” — New York Post
“Thrilling and moving” — Booklist
“The novel is an elegiac tribute to family and civilization—fragile collective entities that should be cherished while they still hold.” — BookPage
BookPage
The novel is an elegiac tribute to family and civilization—fragile collective entities that should be cherished while they still hold.”
New York Post
A fascinating epic tale.
Booklist (starred review)
Hashimi’s narrative is telenovela-good—daring adventurers, deadly secrets, family drama, the beloved dead, a politician-in-the-making, true love, and more.”
NPR
The question of whether Sitara can go home again is the existential and physical journey Hashimi conjures, in a story at once surreal and deeply rooted in the history of Afghanistan’s modern turmoil and ancient enchantment.
Booklist
Thrilling and moving”
New York Post
A fascinating epic tale.
The New York Post
A fascinating epic tale.
Library Journal
10/01/2020
Ten-year-old Sitara Zalmani is living comfortably in late 1970s Kabul, with her father a key aide to progressive president Sardar Daoud, when a Communist coup leads to Daoud's assassination and the death of Sitari's entire family. She's saved by a guard named Shair, but years later, as a successful surgeon in America, must consider whether he was responsible for those awful deaths. From the best-selling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell; with a 75,000-copy first printing.
APRIL 2021 - AudioFile
Mozhan Marno narrates this powerful story about secrets from the past that won't stay buried. Adopted from Afghanistan as a child, Sitara Zamani finds a new life in America and grows up to be a surgeon. Marno vividly captures Sitara's gritty determination to bury memories of fleeing Kabul, the only surviving member of her family. Listeners will be drawn into a complex plot that takes listeners from Afghanistan to America, from war to the operating room. This is international literature at its finest as told by an experienced narrator. Marno maximizes the drama throughout one woman's reckoning with her past. M.R. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
