The Storyteller's Daughter: One Woman's Return to Her Lost Homeland

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The Storyteller's Daughter: One Woman's Return to Her Lost Homeland

3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 · rating details · 480 ratings · 84 reviews

The vivid, often startling memoir of a young woman shaped by two dramatically disparate worlds. Saira Shah is the English-born daughter of an Afghan aristocrat, inspired by his dazzling stories to rediscover the now lost life their forebears presided over for nine hundred years within sight of the minarets and lush gardens of Kabul and the snow-topped mountains of the Hind...more

Hardcover, 253 pages

Published September 16th 2003 by Knopf (first published January 28th 2003)

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Dec 04, 2008 Antof9 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2007-read, biographies-memoirs, made-me-cry, fathers

It's hard to know what to say about this book. I said a lot of it in the journal entry for the audio version. I am so glad I was introduced to this book. It's such a great "Current Events" class without all the traditional dry "clip an article from the paper and come to class prepared to talk about it". I don't know if it makes sense or not, but one of the things about this book that resonates with me is her desire to call a country her own. My dad was in the (American) Air Force, and although I...more It's hard to know what to say about this book. I said a lot of it in the journal entry for the audio version. I am so glad I was introduced to this book. It's such a great "Current Events" class without all the traditional dry "clip an article from the paper and come to class prepared to talk about it". I don't know if it makes sense or not, but one of the things about this book that resonates with me is her desire to call a country her own. My dad was in the (American) Air Force, and although I love travel and change, there have been many times in my life that I felt I didn't have a place to call "home", and when people ask where I'm from, I often don't have an answer.

I love this: "For the first time in my life I was nufus-dar, the Afghan term that means literally 'having people' - but which conveys a sense of safety and belonging. I had found my tribe." For years when living far from family, my family made family from friends around us. The other funny thing to me about that is that the word "nufus" is also about people in Turkish. When we lived in Turkey, we noticed that as you entered each town, you'd see a sign with the name of the town, and underneath it the population count. The word for "population" was "nufus"!

Here's something else that struck me, and I'll end with this:

  It struck me that a sense of humour may be the opposite of fanaticism, or at least its antidote.  It is difficult to dream of martyrdom if you can see the funny side of life.  Of course, the great Afghan poet Jalaluddin Rumi got there centuries before me, and said it better:  "If you have no sense of humour, then you have an incompleteness in your soul."

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Apr 08, 2012 Ron rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

Part memoir, part reportage, this beautifully written book is also an inquiry into the nature of myth, identity, and the limits of human endurance. Born in England and raised on the memories of her Afghan father's homeland, the author journeys as a young journalist to Afghanistan during the Soviet Occupation in the 1980s, traveling with the mujahidin rebels, who with massive infusions of weapons from the CIA eventually drive out the Russians and then quickly succumb again to an equally destructi...more

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Jan 26, 2011 Bruce rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: women-s-studies, religion

The Storyteller’s Daughter is a memoir of a British born Afghan woman. The author’s narrative style is enjoyable and easy to read. Ms. Shah, a British journalist, intersperses Afghan and family history, philosophy and legends with her personal experiences. When a little girl her father told her stories about Afghanistan and later said, “I’ve given you stories to replace a community. They are your community.”
Very early in the book she relates some of her experiences while filming “Beneath the Vei...more The Storyteller’s Daughter is a memoir of a British born Afghan woman. The author’s narrative style is enjoyable and easy to read. Ms. Shah, a British journalist, intersperses Afghan and family history, philosophy and legends with her personal experiences. When a little girl her father told her stories about Afghanistan and later said, “I’ve given you stories to replace a community. They are your community.”
Very early in the book she relates some of her experiences while filming “Beneath the Veil.” She is traveling with RAWA and describes choking under the burqa and speaks of its coarse veil as being like prison bars. She discusses Taliban rules and compares them to own Sufism. She writes of her visit to Taliban women’s hospital and describes it as filthy, with no medicine, little medical care, and families must feed patients or they starve. In a lament she notes: “they [Taliban:] have corrupted all the qualities I grew up believing to be quintessentially Afghan: generosity of spirit, courage, boundless self-confidence and, above all, a sense of humor.’ While her Scottish Grandmother’s diary spoke of the beauty of Kabul, the city is now all rubble.
A majority of the book is about her experiences. As a young girl of 17 she travels to Pakistan to attend a wedding and meet her extended family for first time. She relates her Uncle’s offer to arrange a marriage with a cousin in Peshawar and then the antics her Aunt pulls to extricate the author from the situation. The marriage ceremony she was attending was two weeks long with the men being free to enjoy it. To Ms. Shan the bride looked like a bird with broken wing and the women were reserved.
Her descriptions of her later stay in Peshawar as a journalist and her relations with her extended family are poignant. It is exciting to read about her travels with Pushtun tribesmen and the Mujahidin in the 80’s. Interjecting politics she notes that thanks to the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence) the US [under Reagan:] nurtured a brand of extremist political Islam that, until now, had been almost unknown in Afghanistan. As regards Islam she writes: “although the world tends to view division within Islam in terms of schools and creeds, I believe there is a much more fundamental conflict. It is between those who cling to the literal letter of the Islamic law, and those who stress its inner values.”
In Peshawar she developed a relationship with a Professor who was like a father figure/mentor. Before the Taliban emerged, the Mujahidin began eliminating the intelligentsia, moderates who could oppose them. Among them was Ms. Shah’s professor. It was his murder that ended of myth of noble Mujahidin.
Ms. Shah has written an exciting memoir. In what could be described as an adventure book she has woven Afghan history and legends in an easily read narrative of a female journalist’s experiences in a patriarchal world. (less)

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Oct 31, 2010 Deborah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books, reader-library-loans

Saira Shah has an absorbing story to tell, herself, as we follow her in pursuit of an Afghanistan she was raised to believe in as a nearly mystical place, at her father's knee.

A brilliant author with a fascinating life, Ms Shah kept me on the edge of my seat and the hours flew by as I listened to her descriptions of the Afghaney (sp?) people, the Taliban, and her travels through the mountain terrains to seek her ancestory home and people. What she found in the end was far more than she'd hoped f...more

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Jun 10, 2009 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book by Saira Shah was very interesting. I cannot imagine putting on a shalwar kameez, pretending to be a young man, and trekking around Afgahnistan with the Mujahideen during Afghanistan's war with the Soviet Union. What an amazing and unforgettable experience that must have been. For me, I felt Shah's book shed some light upon how difficult it is to live in two different worlds. On the one hand she grew up in the west, and on the other hand she was raised with a fierce love of her family'...more

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May 07, 2012 Sandie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The three star rating is only because I'm a fiction girl at heart, and this is a non-fiction account of an Englishwoman of Afghani heritage returning to Afghanistan during the time of the mujahedin and then again later after Sept 11. I certainly enjoyed reading this book, and I learned a lot about the Afghan people that I didn't know, such as how the Taliban came to power as a result of the mujahedin warlords fighting for supremacy. Some passages were unforgettable. At one point, Sairah is being...more

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May 21, 2012 Miss.terri rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wanting to realize a reunion with her heritage from
her Afghan father’s side of the family, Saira Shah
finds the beauty of a country torn apart by war and
political strategies. She is finding the truth about
the country of her heritage. It is not an easy read
in view of September 11, 2001 and some of the stories
concerning the Taliban. I am so happy that evil man
was taken off the world stage (Osama Bin Laden).
There was also a mention of Rwanda and the genocide there,
with regard to the press ig...more

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May 24, 2012 TRJ rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It’s a book on Saira Shah’s journey to find the Afghanistan in her father’s stories. Instead she finds barren land and a land thats on war. But caught in between are the simple people whose lives are shattered, homes lost, wandering and living in foreign lands as refugees. The book gives glimpses of life when there was peace, life during the war with Soviets and finally the life in Taliban era where women cannot study or work but can only beg in the streets. The book follows Saira as she climbs...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Dot rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dot-s-booklist-2012

Saira Shah begins her book by talking about her family and growing up in England but always being aware that Afghanistan is her homeland. She hears stories about the fabulous estate that was once owned by her family but lost to them when her grandfather was unable to return home to claim it during WW2.

Saira Shah is a journalist who has made a career of visiting war zones and she therefore took the opportunity to cover the hostilities in Afghanistan so that she could experience her homeland in pe...more

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Dec 14, 2009 Rehana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Rehana by: Umm Faycell

Liked the historical aspect of the book but author's personal journey lacked real depth for my interest. It seemed like a soul searching channel 4 news report - and how soul searching does that ever get?!

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Mar 09, 2009 Randall Wood rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The best travel writing interleaves the personal with the external, and Shah's tale of personal reconciliation in a perhaps unreconcilable land is poignant and moving. Her prose falls short of the mark, perhaps given her background in journalism rather than something more evocative (I much prefer Colin Thubron for his immense vocabulary and clever turns of phrase) but Shah's insights into Afghanistan are precious. It's an easy to recommend introduction to the complexity and convolution of a land...more

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Feb 13, 2009 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An autobiography of Shah's work in Afghanistan during the Soviet war, the period of the Taliban and post-Taliban, woven together with her own thoughts on seeking the mystical homeland she had heard about in stories from her father and relatives while growing up. An interesting and well-written narrative with interesting insights into life in Afghanistan as well as the difficulty of coming to grips with the difference between one's image of a place and it's reality. Shah was born and raised in En...more

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Sep 19, 2011 Sandra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-2011, library-books

This was an interesting book, but abit tedious at times. I'm glad its done. I guess I was expecting something quite different.

From the book: The vivid, often startling memoir of a young woman shaped by two dramatically disparate worlds. Saira Shan is the English-born daughter of an Afghan aristocrat, inspired by his dazzling stories to rediscover the now lost life their forebearers presided over for nine hundred years within sight of the snow-capped mountains and lush gardens of Kabul.

Ms. Shah a...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Gerrigray rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The memoir of a young woman who was born and raised in England listening to her father's stories of the beautiful Afghanistan they had left behind. When she visits Afghanistan for the first time when she is 21 she finds a country ravaged by war, poverty, and religious puritanism. She disguises herself as a boy in order to travel in Afghanistan. The heartbreak she experiences leads her to return a few years later to document the oppression of women in a documentary film, "Beneath the Veil."

A movi...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: afghanistan

This book was a great read for me because it is about Afghanistan and Pakistan and I traveled there at age 18. Many of the places described are places I visited and have impressionable memories of - notably Peshawar on the Pakistan/Afghanistan boarder, Kabul and Paghman.

Interesting as well that I have read some of the books of Idries Shaw, father of Saira Shah, so the reflection on her life as a child growing with with her famous father, writer of Sufi stories, was another nice dimension of this...more

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Sep 08, 2011 Denise Cuenin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was difficult for me to get through but I am glad I finally returned to it and finished it. The book is a very introspective, non-fiction account of a British reporter who spends years on and off in Afghanistan covering the Russian occupation and subsequent civil war. I think the reason I found it hard to read was because it is quite self indulgent and because I was stressed as I anticipated things getting worse as the story progresses. The time of the Taliban rule is horrendous to rea...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Toni rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Lynne

Recommended to Toni by: Chrissie

Shelves: afghanistan, biography-memoir, history, multi-cultural

English born Saira Shah's was weaned on her father's stories of a lush and majestic land, instilling in her the desire to search for her Afghani roots. As an adult her longing to find her ancestral land takes her into the violence and upheaval of an Afghanistan torn apart by years of invaders. It's a difficult, though moving, story of the time she spent as a journalist in a land she beautifully describes.

I now have a much better grasp of Afghanistan's convoluted history and the mindset of it's...more

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Nov 17, 2008 Kiersten rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclub

This book was very eye-opening. I loved the insights about the Afghani myths and culture. However, by the end of the book, I was really tired about listening to her wax philosophical and whiny about how she couldn't reconcile her eastern heritage with her western upbringing, and about how she couldn't find herself, when there were actual atrocities and horrors unfolding all around her.

At one point, after she had knowingly dishonored her family and her beloved uncle by moving in with her boyfrie...more

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Oct 06, 2009 Marcie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: my-bookshelf-future-reads, biography-memiors-letters-journal, reportage-travel-lit

I found this book completely absorbing. The author has written a story that is informative, illuminating, passionate and wrenching as she takes us along on her quest to know her home land... its mystique, its landscape and its people, her people.

I have read half a dozen or so books on Afghanistan recently, my own quest of sorts to understand better some thing of the history, culture, and traditions of a people I have not had the benefit of knowing except through the lens of war as presented in...more I found this book completely absorbing. The author has written a story that is informative, illuminating, passionate and wrenching as she takes us along on her quest to know her home land... its mystique, its landscape and its people, her people.

I have read half a dozen or so books on Afghanistan recently, my own quest of sorts to understand better some thing of the history, culture, and traditions of a people I have not had the benefit of knowing except through the lens of war as presented in our media.

Shah's story take us through the years of the years of the Soviet Invasion, the Taliban and post Taliban years. Having been born and raised in London, she travels to her homeland armed with the mysticism of her father's stories and finds herself struggling to reconcile the Eastern myths she has grownup with, her Western identity, and the Afghanistan she finds herself in. She writes with great honesty of the many conflicts that arise within her, and her passion for her homeland is undeniable despite the disappointment, disillusionment, heartache & dismay she experiences through the seemingly never ending warfare. She finds beauty and hardship in the landscape. She finds strength, generosity & loyalty as well as despair, depravity & brutality in the people.

One can't help but despair of a people who have known nothing but war for generations... some for whom warfare is their occupation, the means by which they support their family. A whole generation of young people who have NEVER know peace . Who know how to do nothing but fight... .

This books illuminates for me the many ways that our ignorance ( arrogance) in the West make it impossible for our current involvement in Afghanistan to be successful. We can not hope to make a difference (or impose our will) on a people & culture for whom we remain so utterly uninformed, with out real a understanding.

Many thanks to Saira Shah for writing an honest and passionate book that gives me a little better incite into the beauty and the brutality of her conflicted homeland. I am better for having read this book . I wish that there were more people who would take the time, make the effort to learn something of the history and culture of other people in this world. It might go a long ways towards opening up different avenues of conflict resolution . Or perhaps I'm just idealist. I hope not. I really believe...

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Jun 07, 2010 Julia rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: didn-t-finish, non-fiction

I should have loved this memoir of a journalist going back to the home she had never been to: Afghanistan, but it's not the book for me today, or perhaps it's the storyteller...

“Two people live inside me. Like a couple who rarely speak, they are not compatible. My Western side is a sensitive, liberal, middle class pacifist. My Afghan side I can only describe as a rapacious robber baron. It revels in bloodshed, glories in risk and will not afraid.”

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Jun 06, 2010 Kelleyn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is very informative. The writer is a journalist who returns to her home country only to find that the country her relatives speak of is no longer there. This is far from Kite Runner, so if you are reading this book because you like that book they are very different. If Afghanistan was truely such a wonderful country at one time, it is truely devastating to see what it has become. Nothing to indear you in this book.

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Feb 25, 2011 Molly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: afghanistan, memoir

This book did enrich my understanding of the Afghan culture, mostly post Soviet invasion. But I did struggle a bit with her preoccupation of stalking the Afghan myth that she grew up which was mostly dispelled by the end of the book, and her seeming lack of sensitivity to the overwhelming suffering she must have encountered. Maybe she felt it but did not express it - who knows. But I do greatly admire her incredible courage - this is one very brave woman.

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Nov 07, 2010 Katie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir-travel, setting-asia

This is a great book. Shah's prose has aa Persian sensibility, blending myth and reality, and seeming very lyrical as you read. From a "current affairs" standpoint, there's hind-sight look at the birth of the Taliban an the trouble brewing in Afghanistan in the 80's. I wanted to read more slowly, to try and really learn what was being shared, but also couldn't wait to see where I was going. It has inspired me to educate myself more on the region.

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Jan 14, 2012 Bridget rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

Very beautiful writing and an interesting little mini-memoir. I admit I was a little caught off guard by this book because I thought I was reading THIS The Storyteller's Daughter so it took me a few chapters to realize that I wasn't.

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Aug 10, 2011 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I guess I give this book three stars. The more I read it, the angrier I got that America is fighting in Afghanistan. The Story Teller's Daughter, written by Saira Shah, is a memoir by an Afghani woman who grew up in London and went back to Afghanistan as a western journalist for two long periods of time. If the book evoked this much emotion in me, it must be good.

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Jan 13, 2010 Jupie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A friend lent me this book. It's a true story of a news reporter whose family was from Afganistan. She grew up in England and went back to Afganistan to confirm her father's stories of the people that lived there. She was disappointed but also found people from the stories. An eye opening book about the people of Afganistan.

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Oct 29, 2012 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, true-story

A girl journey's back to Afghanistan and realizes the war-torn country isn't the mythical paradise from her childhood stories. I could have told you that. Just annoyed by the author whose journey felt selfish and most of her pain and suffering avoidable. A sad story.

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Mar 08, 2011 Marjorie Elwood rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While the stories of her childhood and of her early travels in Afghanistan are swash-buckling adventures, I found the book itself to be disjointed and difficult to follow. Shah avoids a pat ending and describes the horrifying events she has witnessed with a lack of affect that made me wonder how well she is coping with the trauma. My favorite quote: "If you have no sense of humour, then you have an incompleteness in your soul." Rumi

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Dec 30, 2008 Jan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fascinating insight into the country of Afghanistan. Unsettling in many ways as the author sets out to find the true Afghanistan only to discover thst the distance between the myths she has been taught and the reality on the ground is too hard to reconcile.

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Nov 16, 2007 Peggy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: biography/currrent affairs/ history

This is a remarkable book, Saira Shah takes us on a journey from an English childhood, laced with Afghan myths handed down from her father, to the terrors and complexities of present-day Afghanistan.. at eh end of it you are left with the truest sense of this magical country together with the recognition that exceptional English writer is also unmistakably Afghani..
The book is alive with detail, emotion, myth, fable, bleeding reality and the author's struggle with her different selves; mild-mann...more

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About Saira Shah

Writer, reporter, and documentary film maker, Shah is daughter of Afghan author Idries Shah and sibling to Tahir Shah and Safia Shah Thomas. She is named after her grandmother, Scottish writer Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah, who wrote as Morag Murray Abdullah.

Her film credits include Beneath the Veil, Death in Gaza, and Unholy War.

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