Silent hearts: a novel

✍ Scribed by Florio, Gwen

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 207 KB
• Edition: First Atria books hardcover edition
• Category: Fiction
• City: Afghanistan--Kabul., Kabul (Afghanistan
• ISBN: 1501181939

✦ Synopsis

“A rich, haunting, immersive story of cultures at the crossroads—deeply moving. A heart-smashingly good read, the kind of novel you’ll want to share with your book club.” —Jamie Ford,New York Times bestselling author of Love and Other Consolation Prizes and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“Highly recommended, especially for fans of Khaled Hosseini.” — Library Journal, starred review

For fans of A Thousand Splendid Suns comes a stirring novel set in Afghanistan​ about two women—an American aid worker and her local interpreter—who form an unexpected friendship despite their utterly different life experiences and the ever-increasing violence that surrounds them in Kabul. ​

In 2001, Kabul is suddenly a place of possibility as people fling off years of repressive Taliban rule. This hopeful chaos brings together American aid worker Liv Stoellner and Farida Basra, an educated Pakistani woman still adjusting to her arranged marriage to Gul, the son of an Afghan strongman whose family spent years of exile in Pakistan before returning to Kabul.

Both Liv and her husband take positions at an NGO that helps Afghan women recover from the Taliban years. They see the move as a reboot—Martin for his moribund academic career, Liv for their marriage. But for Farida and Gul, the move to Kabul is fraught, severing all ties with Farida’s family and her former world, and forcing Gul to confront a chapter in his life he’d desperately tried to erase.

The two women, brought together by Farida’s work as an interpreter, form a nascent friendship based on their growing mutual love for Afghanistan, though Liv remains unaware that Farida is reporting information about the Americans’ activities to Gul’s family, who have ties to the black market.

As the bond between Farida and Liv deepens, war-scarred Kabul acts in different ways upon them, as well as their husbands. Silent Hearts is an absorbing, complex portrayal of two very different but equally resilient women caught in the conflict of a war that will test them in ways they never imagined.

**

Review

"Silent Hearts is searing, brave, and complex, but most importantly, an absolute pleasure to read. I was floored by the depths contained in this book--Florio dissects two marriages with the measured eye of an anthropologist, but paints the husbands and wives with unexpected grace, humility, and pathos. Florio's greatest gift is creating dread--readers will devour each page. This is the best kind of reading, the white-knuckled kind. Florio's twists and turns are never telegraphed, and the ending shocking and so very true. Above all else, this is an important book, a necessary book, an honest and fair-minded examination of love blooming in an arranged marriage, in the most unlikely of places and times: Afghanistan in 2001. I learned so much, and I felt even more. Silent Hearts is my favorite book of the year." (Richard Fifield, author of The Flood Girls )

About the Author

Gwen Florio is a veteran journalist who has covered stories ranging from the shootings at Columbine High School and the trial of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, to the glitz of the Miss America pageant and the more practical Miss Navajo contest. She has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, as well as Lost Springs, Wyoming (population three). She has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; her short fiction, for the Pushcart.

✦ Subjects

Afghanistan -- Kabul