Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords, And One Woman's Journey Through Afghanistan

“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 exploration of Afghanistan and the drug trade which rules the country, from corrupt officials to warlords and child brides and beyond. Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, calls Opium Nation “an insightful and informative look at the global challenge of the Afghan drug trade. Fariba Nawa weaves her personal story of reconnecting with her homeland after 9/11 with a very engaging narrative that chronicles Afghanistan’s dangerous descent into opium trafficking…and most revealingly, how the drug trade has damaged the lives of ordinary Afghan people.” Readers of Gayle Lemmon Tzemach’s The Dressmaker of Khair Khana and Rory Stewart’s The Places Between will find Nawa’s personal, piercing, journalistic tale to be an indispensable addition to the cultural criticism covering this dire global crisis.