The Lovers

October 19, 2015
Norland, a New York Times correspondent, meticulously relates the tale of Ali and Zakia, who became Afghanistan’s most famous couple after marrying in 2013 without parental permission and thereby endangering their lives. In so doing, he opens a window onto their country’s fierce resistance to change, particularly regarding the status of women. Mohammad Ali and Zakia, whose fathers owned adjoining fields outside Bamiyan, a city in central Afghanistan, first met as children. They fell in love as teenagers, but his heritage as a Shiite and ethnic Hazara and hers as a Sunni and ethnic Tajik posed seemingly insurmountable barriers. In Nordland’s telling, the pair emerge as fully rounded characters even while serving as symbols of Afghan culture’s stifling restraints. From the couple’s initial elopement to their unexpected elevation to media prominence in 2014—due to the author’s reporting and a media-savvy New Jersey rabbi with connections to the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs—Nordland’s storytelling remains gripping, with more than a hint of Shakespearean drama. The couple’s survival, in the face of familial and societal condemnation, provides a happy if incomplete resolution. Far less uplifting is Nordland’s reporting on the overall situation for women in Afghanistan, a country that Massouda Jalal, former Afghan minister for women’s affairs, calls “the worst place in the world to be a woman.”

November 15, 2015
A Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist's account of how two young Afghanis from warring ethnic clans risked disgrace and death to wed each other. When Zakia, a Tajik and Sunni Muslim, met Ali, a Hazara and Shia Muslim, both were children growing up in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan. Though they came from different cultural and religious backgrounds, the pair and their families intermingled freely. But their lives and destinies changed drastically when the two fell in love as teenagers. With keen and nuanced insight, Nordland details the tortuous road that Zakia and Ali traveled in the years that followed. The pair carried on a secret courtship and decided to marry in defiance of Islamic law. At first, they attempted to work within the constraints of cultural traditions that dictated the father choose his daughter's husband. However, the lovers realized that running away would be the only way they could be together. As their relationship intensified, they--and especially Zakia--endured beatings and other forms of humiliation at the hands of their families. Their case went to courts in Bamiyan and then Kabul, where it garnered both national and international media attention. By that point, Zakia and Ali had managed to elope and go into hiding. Outraged by her actions, Zakia's father and brothers swore to hunt down the missing girl and kill her to restore family honor. Nordland became the pair's chronicler in the United States and, later, their unofficial protector when, straining the limits of his professional involvement with them, he began to help the pair financially. Meticulously reported and written, Nordland's book is an exceptionally well-delineated glimpse into the marriage practices of a closed patriarchal society and the suffering it has caused women. The author thoughtfully considers the extent to which the West, acting from the outside, can effect social reform in Muslim fundamentalist cultures. A provocative, well-told story of love at all costs and an incisive examination of the continued violation of women's rights in Afghanistan.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2015
A correspondent-at-large for the "New York Times" who shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in the United States, Nordland here chronicles a true Romeo-and-Juliet tale in Afghanistan. Neighbors but from different tribes, Zakia and Ali fell in love and ran away together, defying local custom, civil and religious law, and their families' expectations. They are still in hiding, as Zakia's family seeks to kill her to restore its honor. Nordland's original "Times" pieces about the couple generated huge website traffic in 2014. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2015
Nordland, an international correspondent for the New York Times, chronicles the perilous plight of two star-crossed lovers in Afghanistan. Growing up on neighboring farms in the Bamiyan Valley, Zakia and Ali fell in love as teens. Ali asked Zakia's father, Zaman, for Zakia's hand in marriage, but because they were from different tribes, Zaman refused. This set the lovers on a course that would force them to flee their families in order to marry. Ali's family eventually came around, and Ali's father, Anwar, became the couple's greatest ally. But Zakia's family remained staunchly opposed to the union, going so far as to give up their livelihood to pursue the couple throughout Afghanistan. After writing stories about the couple, Nordland found himself in the difficult position of having to choose between helping them and maintaining his journalistic neutrality. But with Zakia's very life in dangerhe cites numerous examples of young women who have eloped and been returned to their families, only to never be seen againthe author finds himself going to great lengths to help the pair. Nordland offers a stark, eye-opening look at the deplorable state of women's rights in Afghanistan through the travails of a brave, determined young couple.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)