A House Without Windows: A Novel

Product Description

A vivid unforgettable story of an unlikely sisterhood-an emotionally powerful & haunting tale of friendship that illuminates the plight of women in a traditional culture-from the author of the bestselling The Pearl That Broke Its Shell & When the Moon Is Low For two decades Zeba was a loving wife a patient mother & a peaceful villager But her quiet life is shattered when her husband Kamal is found brutally murdered with a hatchet in the courtyard of their home Nearly catatonic with shock Zeba is unable to account for her whereabouts at the time of his death Her children swear their mother could not have committed such a heinous act Kamal's family is sure she did & demands justice Barely escaping a vengeful mob Zeba is arrested & jailed As Zeba awaits trial she meets a group of women whose own misfortunes have also led them to these bleak cells thirty-year-old Nafisa imprisoned to protect her from an honor killing; twenty-five-year-old Latifa who ran away from home with her teenage sister but now stays in the prison because it is safe shelter; & nineteen-year-old Mezhgan pregnant & unmarried waiting for her lover's family to ask for her hand in marriage Is Zeba a cold-blooded killer these young women wonder or has she been imprisoned as they have been for breaking some social rule? For these women the prison is both a haven & a punishment Removed from the harsh & unforgiving world outside they form a lively & indelible sisterhood Into this closed world comes Yusuf Zeba's Afghan-born American-raised lawyer whose commitment to human rights & desire to help his motherland have brought him back With the fate of this seemingly ordinary housewife in his hands Yusuf discovers that like Afghanistan itself his client may not be at all what he imagines A moving look at the lives of modern Afghan women A House Without Windows is astonishing frightening & triumphant