American Bride in Kabul

By Phyllis Chesler

Book Overview

Few westerners will ever be able to understand Muslim or Afghan society unless they are part of a Muslim family. Twenty years old and in love, Phyllis Chesler, a Jewish-American girl from Brooklyn, embarked on an adventure that has lasted for more than a half-century. In 1961, when she arrived in Kabul with her Afghan bridegroom, authorities took away her American passport. Chesler was now the property of her husband's family and had no rights of citizenship. Back in Afghanistan, her husband, a wealthy, westernized foreign college student with dreams of reforming his country, reverted to traditional and tribal customs. Chesler found herself unexpectedly trapped in a posh polygamous family. She fought against her seclusion and lack of freedom, her Afghan family's attempts to convert her from Judaism to Islam, and her husband's wish to permanently tie her to the country through childbirth. Drawing upon her personal diaries, Chesler recounts her ordeal, the nature of gender apartheid--and her longing to explore this beautiful, ancient, and exotic country and culture. An American Bride in Kabul re-creates a time gone by, a place that is no more, and shares the way in which Chesler turned adversity into a passion for world-wide social, educational, and political reform.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1137279400
• ISBN13: 9781137279408
• Release Date: October 2014
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Disappointed

I was very excited to read this book but I was disappointed with it. For the first half of the book I could not put it down. Her story of getting married and moving to the Middle East is heart wrenching and compelling. But the second half of the book, after returning to The United States, became a history lesson of Afghani culture. Each chapter consists of one personal event followed by dozens of literary and historical references. Such things are important! But not what I wanted to read about. I wish the author wrote more about her and her personal experiences rather than other peoples.