Skip to main content

Book Review: The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell is a debut novel of Afghan-American writer Nadia Hashimi. In the wake of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, many more writers of the same descent have come up with similar stories where the plight of Afghanistan’s women have been a subject of sympathy for readers. The Pearl That Broke Its Shell is one such story: it can be assumed that it is, at some point, influenced by The Thousand Splendid Suns of Khaled Hosseini.


The story is about girls and women of Afghanistan. Rahima and her sisters are often depressed and alone by the fact that they don’t have a brother who could have run errands for the family. On the other side, their father is an opium addict and is good for nothing. So, the need for a male chaperone in the family is their missing point. As suggested by her Aunt Shaima, Rahima has to become a bacha posh (a sort of boy to do all things until she gains maturity). She is send to school as a Rahim and there she joins the gang of boys, wears pants, passes out jokes, and plays football with them. In a sense, she saw and felt what a freedom is outside the barriers of gender discrimination.

Shaima acts as a mentor to Rahima. She tells the tale of her great grandmother Shekiba who was tortured by many and in the last was traded off for a land deal. Despite this, Shekiba fought back to claim her land back. Shekiba’s story runs parallel to Rahima, the only distinguishing fact is that Shekiba existed a century before the current tale of Rahima.

People know that Rahima is a girl playing as a boy; thus taking the advantage of the situation many people begin inciting her father against her. Also, Abdul Khaliq – a warlord has an eye on her. Rahima’s father is indebted to him. Thus, upon gaining her maturity at the age of thirteen, Rahima is forcibly married to the elderly man Abdul Khaliq who already has three wives. This twist of fate is heartbreaking for Rahima as she was a free bird after being nominated as bacha posh. Well, from now onwards a despicable life has in store for her. She hates her and what she is going to do to get away from this fills the rest of the narration.

The tale of two women who struggled for life though apart by century is the most remarkable aspect of this book. Overall, the book is strong enough to bring readers on the brink of tears.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should
57 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo
59 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r
20 comments
Read more