When she was just nine years old, Fariba Nawa and her family fled Afghanistan, escaping the Soviet invasion, the last proxy of the Cold War. She settled in the United States and did not return to her homeland until 2000, after nearly two decades in exile. The country she found upon her return was dramatically different than the Afghanistan of her youth, and she saw firsthand the grim reality for most Afghans. Nawa was particularly struck when she met a twelve-year-old girl bartered as a bride to settle her father’s opium debt. With connections to American officials and ex-pats as well as her Afghan relatives and friends, Nawa embarked on a journey across the country to investigate the drug trade that has come to define so much of Afghanistan’s economy and society.
In OPIUM NATION: Child Brides, Drug Lords, and One Woman’s Journey Through Afghanistan (Harper Perennial; November 8th, 2011; Paperback original; $14.99), Nawa delivers a searing account of the opium business, worth billions of dollars worldwide. She travels from Kandahar and Helmand to Herat and Kabul gathering remarkable stories of people, while also returning to her family’s ancestral home and reflecting on the bitter changes which have come to pass after decades of war. Along the way she encounters poppy farmers, betrayed and abandoned women and children, drug lords, smugglers, addicts, and a sundry of characters that give us a daring and insightful picture of a volatile country whose future and security is of grave importance to America, and the people within its borders.
Fariba Nawa has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, The Sunday Times Magazine (London), Newsday, and The Village Voice. She has been a guest on CBS’s 48 Hours as well as numerous television and radio shows on NPR, the BBC, MTV, and NBC. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two daughters. Visit her online: http://www.faribanawa.com/
An Afghan-American journalist offers a revealing look inside a country torn apart by the opium trade—from corrupt officials to warlords and child brides—while revisiting her own family's deep roots to the land
"Powerful...Nawa draws rich, complex portraits of subjects on both sides of the law . . . Nawa's work is remarkable for its depth, honesty, and commitment to recording women's stories, even when it means putting her own safety at risk. She writes with passion about the history of her volatile homeland and with cautious optimism about its future."
— Publishers Weekly
"Nawa ably captures the tragic complexity of Afghan society and the sheer difficulty of life there...Her assured narrative clearly stems from in-depth reporting in a risk-laden environment."
— Kirkus Reviews
