Opium Nation - Paperback

by Fariba Nawa (Author)

"Nawa deftly sketches the geopolitical nightmare that is today's Afghanistan, but the book's real strength is her detailed, sensitive reporting of individual people's stories." -- Boston Globe

An Afghan-American journalist offers a revealing look inside a country torn apart--from corrupt officials to warlords and child brides--while revisiting her own family's deep roots to the land.

Afghan-American journalist Fariba Nawa delivers a revealing and deeply personal explorationof Afghanistan and the drug trade which rules the country, from corruptofficials to warlords and child brides and beyond. KhaledHosseini, author of The Kite Runner and AThousand Splendid Suns calls Opium Nation "an insightful andinformative look at the global challenge of Afghan drug trade. Fariba Nawa weaves her personalstory of reconnecting with her homeland after 9/11 with a very engagingnarrative that chronicles Afghanistan's dangerous descent into opiumtrafficking...and most revealingly, how the drug trade has damaged the lives ofordinary Afghan people." Readers of Gayle Lemmon Tzemach'sThe Dressmaker of Khair Khanaand Rory Stewart's The Places Between will find Nawa'spersonal, piercing, journalistic tale to be an indispensable addition to thecultural criticism covering this dire global crisis.

Front Jacket

When veteran reporter Fariba Nawa returned home to Afghanistan--the nation she had fled as a child with her family during the Soviet invasion nearly twenty years earlier--she discovered a fractured country transformed by a multibillion-dollar drug trade. In Opium Nation, Nawa deftly illuminates the changes that have overtaken Afghanistan after decades of unbroken war. Sharing remarkable stories of poppy farmers, corrupt officials, expats, drug lords, and addicts, including her haunting encounter with a twelve-year-old child bride who was bartered to pay off her father's opium debts, Nawa offers a revealing and provocative narrative of a homecoming more difficult than she ever imagined as she courageously explores her own Afghan American identity and unveils a startling portrait of a land in turmoil.

--Barnett R. Rubin, author of The Fragmentation of Afghanistan

Back Jacket

When veteran reporter Fariba Nawa returned home to Afghanistan--the nation she had fled as a child with her family during the Soviet invasion nearly twenty years earlier--she discovered a fractured country transformed by a multibillion-dollar drug trade. In Opium Nation, Nawa deftly illuminates the changes that have overtaken Afghanistan after decades of unbroken war. Sharing remarkable stories of poppy farmers, corrupt officials, expats, drug lords, and addicts, including her haunting encounter with a twelve-year-old child bride who was bartered to pay off her father's opium debts, Nawa offers a revealing and provocative narrative of a homecoming more difficult than she ever imagined as she courageously explores her own Afghan American identity and unveils a startling portrait of a land in turmoil.