“It was like witnessing somebody take their last breath.” This is how the Afghan-American author Nadia Hashimi described the Taliban’s victory march through Afghanistan. This year, we are honoured to invite a highly topical author who lives between two worlds. For the past couple months she has been at home in Maryland glued to her phone in constant communication with friends and acquaintances in Kabul and other cities in Afghanistan.

Both Hashimi’s parents left Afghanistan for the United States in the early seventies. However, Nadia, born in New York City, was surrounded by Afghan culture and history through her aunties, uncles and cousins. This shaped who she is today.

It wasn’t until 2003, after the American invasion, that she was able to visit her homeland. It was an eye-opening experience that motivated the young medic and Middle Eastern studies student to write about the lives of Afghan people. As a trained paediatrician, Hashimi wrote in her free time and debuted with The Pearl That Broke Its Shell (2014), an international best seller about the lives of two women during two different Afghan eras.

A year later her novel When the Moon Is Low (2015)was published, translated in Swedish as När natten är som ljusast. It is a captivating story about an Afghan mother fleeing from the Taliban and about the consequences of Europe’s closed borders. In quick succession she published the novels A House Without Windows (2016), One Half From the East (2016), The Sky At Our Feet (2018), and most recently Sparks Like Stars (2021). Hashimi has proven to be a great storyteller whose topical stories about the lives of Afghan women and their circumstances have resonated with readers worldwide. Forced migration, conflict, poverty, misogyny, colonialism, addiction and the disjointed experience of living between two worlds are all reoccurring themes. Complex and strong portraits of women and girls: Rahima, Shekiba, Zeba, Fereiba, Obayda, Sitara- are Hashimi’s speciality.

Hashimi sees her own prolific literary output as stemming from a deep-rooted love of storytelling, as well as a form of political activism. As Hashimi herself has said: “books are versatile tools”. Her activism can also be seen in her participation in organisations that work directly with the education of Afghan children and the empowerment of women.

Language: English
Saturday 26 March 18.30
Uppsala Stadsteater