Searching for Saleem: An Afghan Woman's Odyssey [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Nancy Dupree (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Now that the forces of the fundamentalist Taliban has taken over Kabul and its restrictions, particularly of women, are making news in the West, there will no doubt be interest in Searching for Saleem, one woman's memoirs of a life inAfghanistan. Unfortunately, Gauhari, formerly an associate professor of science at Kabul University and currently a member of the biology department at the University of Nebraska, is a poor writer who would have been better off letting another write her story. Her opening chapter, "A Happy Childhood," is followed by nearly embarrassing descriptions of her future husband and her feelings for him: "My heart pounded; my face blushed; I had warm feeling all over my body that were unfamiliar to me." After they married, Saleem disappeared on April 27, 1978, during the Soviet-backed Communist takeover. The bulk of the book is a diaristic description of her search for her missing husband as Afghanistan falls apart around her. But the real horror of the day-to-day struggle never comes to life, as Gauhari opts instead for vague pronouncements like "I dearly missed the good old times, before the bloody coup of April 1978."

Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

During the 1978 coup in Afghanistan, Gauhari's husband, Saleem, disappeared without a trace from his air force unit. Here she chronicles both her unsuccessful attempts to find him and her family's escape from their war-torn land. Based on her recollections and the research contributed by university colleagues, the text includes a historical introduction by Nancy Hatch Dupree and Gauhari's brief personal epilog. Although Gauhari offers an intriguing examination of human resilience in a little-known trouble spot, her colloquial language and uneven adherence to her stated aims make the book somewhat unbalanced and anticlimactic. Her epilog provides no further historical detail, and Dupree's foreword contains only the briefest of updates. Of interest mainly to specialized collections; for another view of life under a totalitarian, sometimes violent regime, try Jan Wong's Red China Blues (Doubleday, 1996).?Barbara Hutcheson, Greater Victoria P.L., B.C.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 267 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press; illustrated edition edition (October 28, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803221568
• ISBN-13: 978-0803221567
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,730,388 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Searching for Saleem, March 30, 2000

By	Robert L Canfield (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

This is a gripping story of one woman's attempt to cope with a world that suddenly and ominously changed around her. She and her family were living in Kabul when a coup de etat by a group of Afghan Communists plunged the country into civil war. The immediate consequnce for her was the disappearance of her husband. Along with that the social world she had known was dramatically changed. New and strange demands were placed upon her in her university job. Ordinary social and commercial concourse in the city broke down as military checkpoints interrupted traffic. Reliable information on what was happening became impossible to come by. Rumors abounded. Her children brought home communist propaganda. As Mrs. Gauhari searched for her husband friends and colleagues in official places told contrary and implausible stories about his whereabouts; some of her relatives withdrew support; mysterious visitors for unknown reasons offered empty promises of help. The book could be read as a woman's experience in a male-dominated world. But it is much more: this is what it is like to be plunged without warning into civil war. The presumptions of ordinary life give way to the confusion, suspicion, and terror resulting from the suddend explosion of violence among neighbors and associates. In that sense this is one woman's account of life in the midst of a ferocious civil war, an experience that many peoples around the world have had in the last decade: in Rwanda and Burundi, for instance, where repeated massacres have taken hundreds of thousands of lives; in Yugoslavia where Serb, Croat, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians have sought to cleanse each other from their respective enclaves; in Sri Lanka where Tamil separatists and Ceylonese nationalists have murdered each other for a generation; in Chechnya where a war of secession has destroyed the country.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars One of a very few books about Afghani women, November 4, 2001

By	L. West "LoisLovesToRead" (Lynn, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Searching for Saleem" is one of a very few books I've found about Afghani women. It takes up where "Three Women of Herat" by Veronica Doubleday leaves off. The writing is very good although not great, but it's not really the quality of the writing that makes this book so important--it's the account of life in Afghanistan. I find it amazing that there are so few books about Afghanistan! And most are for children.

After the September 11, 2001 bombings in the United States by radical Muslim terrorists, I wanted to know more about the people of Afghanistan. Morrocco was my only experience traveling in a Muslim state, and I found that Afghanistan is radically different. This book provides a rare look into the experience of one Afghani woman who seems atypical of many of the women in the country but has the facility with English and the education to provide all of us with a glimpse into a country that's playing a significant part in our lives and that seems to be a place where few Americans have lived or traveled.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Searching For Saleem: An Afghan women's Odyssey, April 2, 2002

By A Customer

I have read this book last year and now I read it for the second time. I ejoyed it more this time. It is a wonderful book based on events after Communism take over of Afghanistan and it brings sense to our present day events. In the Forword section of the book, Nancy Dupree indicates that ..." years of discord have stretched taut the fabric of this society (Afghanistan) and left many lingering effects. National traits once respected, honored hallmarks of Afghan character, are in jeopardy. Tolerence for others. Forthrightness. Aversion to fanatics. Respect for women. Loyalty to colleagues and classmates. Dislike for ostentation. Commiment to academic freedom. All has been compromised.
Thankfully, the spirit of courageues determination, amply evident in the pages that follow, is still strong. There seems no reason to doubt, therefore, the reconstruction can be astnishingly rapid."