A Cup of Friendship

Author Deborah Rodriguez (KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL) returns to Afghanistan, this time stepping into fiction. Switching from beauty school to coffee shop, she brings current-day Kabul into focus from the viewpoint of proprietor Sunny and her customers. Sunny befriends a British reporter and an American philanthropist, questions her attachment to the men in her life, and takes in a kidnapped young woman from the mountains. The realities of war-torn Afghanistan are both the backdrop and essence of Sunny's world. Mozhan Marno's voice carries authenticity as she differentiates the local speech of tailor Rashif, gentle Yasmina, landlady Halagan, and son Ahmet. Marno's cosmopolitan side shines as the brash American, Candace, and the steely Brit, Isabel. With brisk pacing, Marno leads the listener through the intricacies of Afghan life and the dramas of Sunny's coffee-shop family. A.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

October 25, 2010
Rodriguez follows bestselling memoir Kabul Beauty School with a superb debut novel centering on a group of women who come together in a Kabul coffee shop run by Sunny, a free-spirited American. Sunny takes in the young widow, Yazmina, the casualty of her uncle's debt to Afghan thugs, who had taken the girl as payment but dumped her on the side of the road when they discovered she was pregnant. Halajan is a firecracker older widow who hides her cropped hairdo, jean skirts, and love letters under her burqa. Isabel, a hard-hitting BBC journalist on location to expose the story of the destruction of the poppy fields, uncovers a deeper truth: female workers addicted to the opium they handle who are then, some with their babies, jailed for "moral crimes." Candace, a well-heeled Bostonian, has followed her Afghan boyfriend to Kabul to fund-raise for his school, but soon suspects his real motives for the school and their relationship. A craftsman and a storyteller, Rodriguez captures place and people wholeheartedly, unveiling the faces of Afghanistan's women through a wealth of memorable characters who light up the page.