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A Fort of Nine Towers<\/strong><\/em> by Qais Akbar Omar (Fiction 2014) has been collecting rave reviews ever since its release in April 2013 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The following is a sampling of the critics’ responses to this wonderful book:<\/p>\n \u201cIf you read only one book this summer, make it this one.\u201d Oprah<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n \u201cBeautifully written, with the pacing and suspense of a novel … his richly detailed account of growing up in Afghanistan under the warlords and then the Taliban is deeply fulfilling, remarkable not least because he lived to tell the tale.\u201d The Washington Post<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n \u201cMind-boggling yet matter-of-fact, A Fort of Nine Towers<\/i><\/b> is the memoir of a childhood in ’90s Afghanistan \u2013 a riveting story of war as seen through a child’s eyes and summoned from an adult’s memory.\u201d The New York Times Book Review<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n \u201cA Fort of Nine Towers<\/i><\/b> captures a time and a place unknown to most Americans … graphic, certainly, but it’s also sweet and funny and inspiring.\u201d The Boston Globe<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/i><\/b>\u201cThe painful, sometimes funny human complexities of such anecdotes make Omar’s book more than simply an eye-opening account of a terrible period in recent history, though it’s valuable enough as that.\u201d Newsday<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n \u201cHere at last is a powerful, haunting memoir that does justice to [Afghanistan\u2019s] tough, tenacious and astonishingly good-humoured people. The best thing about it . . . is that it is a book about Afghanistan written by an Afghan.\u201d London Evening Standard<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n \u201cThe book, by a young Afghan, Qais Akbar Omar, is an extraordinary memoir that portrays his coming of age during a time of madness.\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n \u201c\u2026exhilarating and unsettling, because this is Omar’s lived experience, and one that is far stranger than fiction, though written in surprisingly refined prose for a writer who taught himself English to become an interpreter for Coalition soldiers.\u201d The Independent<\/i><\/b>, London<\/p>\n <\/i><\/b>\u201cQais’s narrative cuts through hardened pro- or anti-war biases to record both the pain and pride that remain the hallmark of so many Afghans.\u201d The Daily Beast<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/i><\/b>\u201cAs Omar recounts in his new memoir, A Fort of Nine Towers<\/i><\/b>, life in Afghanistan is full of rich culture, family tradition and storytelling … [it] is Omar’s attempt to heal the rift in understanding between our two cultures.\u201d Bookish<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/i><\/b>\u201cAs lyrical as it is haunting, this mesmerizing, not-to-be-missed debut memoir is also a loving evocation of a misunderstood land and people.\u201d Kirkus Review<\/i><\/b>, published in the Austin American Statesman<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/i><\/b>\u201c… His prose is deliciously forthright, extravagant, somewhat mischievous, and very Afghan in its sense of long-suffering endurance and also reconciliation.\u201d Publisher’s Weekly<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n \u201cIt’s as if the author, 29 at the time of writing, has closed his eyes to recall the essence of events that are burned into his memory from age 7 to young adulthood. He chooses both chilling and loving details that convey his emotion without cluttered analysis…\u201d The New Mexican, <\/i><\/b>Santa Fe<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Omar’s new book, A Fort Of Nine Towers<\/i><\/b>, is a poetic, funny and terrifying memoir of life in Kabul between the Soviet Army’s exit and the Taliban’s retreat.\u201d The Economist<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n —<\/i><\/b> A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar (Fiction 2014) has been collecting rave reviews ever since its release in April 2013 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The following is a sampling of the critics’ responses to this wonderful book: \u201cIf you read only one book this summer, make it this one.\u201d Oprah \u201cBeautifully […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/crwr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/crwr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/crwr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/crwr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/crwr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=992"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/crwr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":996,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/crwr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions\/996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/crwr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/crwr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/crwr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nQais Akbar Omar<\/b> (whose first name is pronounced \u201cKice\u201d) manages his family\u2019s carpet business in Kabul and writes books. In 2007, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Colorado. He has studied business at Brandeis University and is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Boston University. Omar has lectured on Afghan carpets in Afghanistan, Europe, and the United States. He is the coauthor, with Stephen Landrigan, of Shakespeare<\/i> in Kabul<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"