Customer Reviews

The Widow's Husband

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Widow's Husband has everything we want in a novel. Human drama centered around a sympathetic character faced with difficult choices, a supporting cast composed of quirky people that feel real, and a tense story layered with subplots, each with its own tension, that keeps you turning pages.
The Widow's Husband does one better, and this is the trick to greatness. Ansary manages to put us in the mind of someone to whom western culture is foreign. We see the British from the eyes of an Afghani. He really delivers and because of that achievement, The Widow's Husband transcends from "good book, glad I read it" to "awesome novel, he changed the way I think."

The Widow's Husband is comparable to J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, except that you get the point of view of both sides in the conflict. A rattling yarn about the follies of Empire.

Full of insight into Afghan culture, human nature, and the dangers of mission creep -- if you're ever tempted to invade Afghanistan, read this book first. A great story about East and West from an author who understands them both.

Ansary draws you into his story from the very first page. I picked up his book planning to sit and read for an hour in the afternoon. I put it down when I finished it, late the same night. His characters are alive with emotion and intelligence. The lack of understanding in the clash of Western Culture with the Afghani world is both startling and sad. There is great insight into the minds and motives of the people in the story and the compelling events which conspire to create the ensuing tragedy. I wish that all of our politicians and every high school student in the country would read this book in order to avoid the repeating of historic events that are taking place once again today. This book had everything it takes to make a truly excellent read; a great story, insight into another culture, and perhaps a glimmer of hope in the birth of future generations.
Read it! You won't regret it.

Set aside some time to curl up in your easy chair with this one. Ansary proves his rip-roaring storytelling gifts, which entertained and enlightened me so much with "Destiny Disrupted," are totally transferable to fiction. What caught my eye was a description of the book I read somewhere that said, "This has all happened before," and described the troops the British Empire sent into the mountains of Afghanistan to quash the restless natives, and only one guy returned alive. Ansary transports you to a time and culture so utterly different from our own, so rich with social nuance and complex obligations, yet human nature ends up being exactly the same. The "Malang" is a kind of homeless person/prophet these people revere. It took me almost no time to get caught up in the drama and machinations among the women, men, and children as they struggle to react properly to the visitation of this holy man to their village. While the British Empire amasses to conquer them, these villagers worry more about which streamlets from the river run through which gardens. How can these puny people stand up to the mighty British soldiers so advanced they seem to come from another planet? The answers will amaze you. I sincerely hope this historical novel is not a parable for our own folly in Afghanistan.

An excellent historical novel that shows the author's deep understanding of both the Afghan history and culture and that of the West (i.e. England). There are many parallels to the situation in Afghanistan today. A Western power does not understand the country's tribal history and culture. This is the best novel, I have read in several years and can recommend it highly.

The Widow's Husband is a classic page-turner, the kind of book you don't want to end. Not only is it historically interesting - in this time of war in Afghanistan - but it's also very clever, witty, and funny (the descriptions of British attire from the Afghan point of view, etc). Tamim Ansary is a fantastic writer. His metaphors are swoopingly delicious, and the attention to detail makes everything leap off the page. You end up wanting to go to this place Char Bagh that probably doesn't even exist! Ansary has found a kind of language or tone that is both foreign and familiar, so we remain in a faraway place in another time, but we have his earthy passionate psychological narrative to draw us in. His three books form a truly impressive body of work.

Widow's Husband is a heady mix of Afghan history and culture, spiked with underlying tensions of suppressed forbidden passion, both East and West. It is storytelling at its most compelling: conflicts continue to rise within each character while the political situation fractures during the British occupation of Kabul in the 1840s. When the singular and mystical character, a Sufi malang, enters the tale, transcendent spiritualism blends with the cunning duplicity of tribal leaders. Convincing in all its dimensions, readers will see parallels to present conditions in Afghanistan and walk with the characters (both Afghan and British) through the fires of war and transformation. Girl In The Mirror

Good historical fiction transports the reader into another place and time and serves to bring the past back "to life." It allows the reader to understand historical events, that often appear larger than life, to be brought down to a human level through the eyes of a character.

In "The Widow's Husband" we see life in a small village of Char Bagh in rural Afghanistan in the 19th century. The concerns of family, community, as well as having enough food stores to last through winter is recognizable, even if the names and customs are unusual to our "western" ears. The routine of rural life in Char Bagh is disrupted by the arrival of a stranger. Hospitality is extended to the man and it soon becomes apparent that he is not a normal traveler, but is instead a mystic. This holy man attracts pilgrims from miles around. Soon the reputation of Char Bagh is even noticed by the British military who have settled in Kabul which then threatens the peacefulness and stability of the village.

The novel shows how the British colonized Afghanistan: bribery and force.

Attempts by the British to interact with the Afghan people without attempting to understand their customs and traditions led to the inevitable clash depicted in the novel when the people revolted in response to the mistreatment of their women and girls.

"The Widow's Husband" serves to illuminate events from history and allow us to draw parallels to current events from our own military campaigns and why it is important to be there with the consent of the people.

I found this book to be a good read. I would recommend it to anyone trying to understand the odd world of mid-east politics. The way things transpired in the book is the same way they transpire today.

Before the U.S. began its war on terror I had never given much thought to Afghanistan, thinking of it as the question to a Jeopardy answer: This Middle Eastern country is central in the land of -stans, bordering Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Iran. I was first introduced to more recent Afghan history in Khaled Hosseini's powerful novel The Kite Runner. And now, even more than when The Kite Runner was first published in 2003, Afghanistan is heavy on our minds. Afghanistan is not simply some sand-filled land in Far-Far-Away. It is a country rich in history and culture, a country that has often been the victim of invasion and conquer. In The Widow's Husband, Tamim Ansary focuses on the 19th century British invasion of Afghanistan and the chaotic, unsettling results upon the Afghan people.

There is a dual story here. First, we are introduced to the people in the tiny village of Char Bagh. Ibrahim is the malik, the leader, of the village. He is deemed not fit to lead by the elders, partly because he is too young, partly because he is a scholar who prefers to spend his time reading great poets. He is a man of yearning--yearning for a greater connection to his God, and yearning for Khadija, his widowed sister-in-law. His wife, Soraya, is emotionally unstable and not the pillar of support that Khadija can be. When a stranger, a vagabond, begins living near the village, only Khadija and Ibrahim recognize him for what he is--a malang, a mystical holy man. Ibrahim's devotion to the malang sends him on a journey from his isolated village to the city of Kabul.

The second story revolves around the British troops stationed in Afghanistan. They have recently installed a new king, a man who will be sympathetic to their cause, in other words, pliant. As the two stories intertwine, the novel becomes a page-turner. The plot twists left me guessing which way the story would go next. How will Ibrahim deal with British interference in his remote village? Will the British walk away triumphant, or will the Afghans? The Widow's Husband is a study in how easily different cultures can misunderstand each other and how easily those misunderstandings can turn to violence.

There are many strengths in this novel. Ansary switches between the voices of the Afghans and the British in a way where you can hear the cadence of each accent in your head as you read the words on the page. The characters, particularly Ibrahim, Khadija, the malang, and Oxley, a British soldier, are fully realized. Ibrahim is a well-developed protagonist. He is a case of contradictions, on the one hand devoutly pious, a man who would rather read poetry or his holy book than fight a neighboring village over necessary water. On the other hand, he is surprisingly indifferent towards his own wife while harboring love, and lust, over his widowed sister-in-law. There is a certain realism, a poetic correctness in the ending, even if it was not the ending I wished for.

If you are interested in 19th century Afghanistan history, in British invasions during the Empire years, or you simply wish to read a story about love, yearning, and struggle in the face of adversity, you will enjoy The Widow's Husband.