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Publisher:
Branden Books |
Release
Date: 2003 |
ISBN:
0-8283-2083-7 |
Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: |
Buy
it at Amazon |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Non-Fiction / Personal Memoirs |
Reviewed:
2003 |
Reviewer:
Jeff Shelby |
Reviewer
Notes: |
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Letters
from Afghanistan
By Eloise
Hanner
In
the age of technology's immediate response and email, Eloise Hanner
reminds us of the power in a written letter.
Hanner's
Letters from Afghanistan recounts her time spent in Afghanistan
as a member of the Peace Corps in the early 1970's. Hanner tells
her story by way of the letters that she wrote to her mother during
her time away and, as a result has written a book that is both entertaining
and involving.
Hanner
takes us to a city in Afghanistan that most Americans have become
familiar with for all the wrong reasons over the last two years.
She is stationed in Kabul as an English teacher. Her vivid description
of the capital city is strikingly different from what we now see
on the evening news. Her early letters home are predictable for
anyone who has ventured into a land that differs from the American
landscape - frustration, confusion, exhaustion and self-doubt are
evident in her first days in Afghanistan.
However,
as her determination to succeed in her difficult task keeps pushing
her forward, the tone of her letters begins to change and the hope,
excitement and satisfaction she is experiencing are almost tangible
on the pages. The people she encounters, the places she visits and
the struggles she faces down become more compelling in each weekly
letter she sends home.
While
her story may be one that has been told before - stranger in a strange
land - it is her chosen format of the letters that makes this book
work. The letters are personal, simple and detail her experiences
in a way that make it seem as if each letter was written to the
reader rather than her mother. The letters share the range of emotions
she goes through, yet manage to avoid being overly sentimental.
Her final letter, written on her final night in the small house
that became her home in Kabul, eloquently displays her conflicted
emotions, as she is happy to be returning to the United States,
yet saddened to leave a place that became her adopted home. In a
traditional narrative format, Hanner would have been hard pressed
to convey her feelings so succinctly to readers. In the letter,
it is there for us to see.
Hanner
admits in the epilogue that, given the chance today, she would probably
not return to Afghanistan because of the violence and instability.
A wise choice. Fortunately, though, Eloise Hanner did travel to
Afghanistan thirty years ago and brought back a tremendous story
that should be required reading for anyone looking to travel abroad
and for anyone who just enjoys getting a good letter from a friend.
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