Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan

Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan
by Ann Jones

Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan
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Book Summary Information

Author: Ann Jones
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-03-06
ISBN: 0312426593
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Picador

Book Reviews of Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan

Book Review: Seeing is Believing
Summary: 5 Stars

This is a scorcher of a book and Ann Jones is a brilliant writer who makes the brutality of life in Afghanistan so real that the people she writes about jump off the page and into your head and heart. Jones, a journalist, went to Afghanistan to work with an international NGO (nongovernmental organization) that seeks to improve the lives of Afghan women and children. This is a mission that seems impossible, given all the constraints, both cultural and political, that are brought to bear on any logical effort to address the grinding poverty and despair in this unhappy place.

Some reviewers have criticized Jones's account as naive, asserting that she does not take into account the political realities surrounding Afghanistan, but that is exactly the reason that I found her book so compelling. From Jones we get no excuses or rationalizations as to why Afghanistan is a perennial pawn in the "great game" of world power. And she makes few apologies for a culture that dehumanizes women and girls, the first step to making it OK for men to trade and treat them like animals (or worse). Jones tells it like it is, which is a very different story than we get from governments and the entrenched international development professionals. Jones was an eyewitness to how big development plans play out on the ground, and she relays her truth in a style that is as unsparing as the rigid, tribal rules that impede progress.

This book is wrenching and at times painful to read, but I argue that it is important for anyone who wants to have a full view of our world today and the events that are currently shaping it. While it's clearly true that Ann Jones has an alternate take on the reasons behind Afghanistan's present, foul condition, hers is a voice that needs to be heard and her subjects are people whose stories deserve to be told.

Summary of Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan

Soon after the bombs stopped falling on Kabul, award-winning journalist and women's rights activist Ann Jones set out for the shattered city. This is her trenchant report from the city where she spent the next four winters working in humanitarian aid. Investigating the city's prison for women, retraining Kabul's long-silenced English teachers, Jones enters the lives of everyday women and men and reveals through small events some big disjunctions: between the new Afghan "democracy" and the still-entrenched warlords, between American promises and performance, between what's boasted of and what is. At once angry, profound, and starkly beautiful, Kabul in Winter brings alive the people and day-to-day life of a place whose future depends upon our own.

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