About this item
A coming-of-age story about one boy's journey across contemporary Afghanistan to find and bring home the family dog, blending the grit and immediacy of voice-driven fiction like We Need New Names with the mythmaking of One Thousand and One Nights.Twelve-year-old Marwand's memories from his previous visit to Afghanistan six years ago center on his contentious relationship with Budabash, the terrifying but beloved dog who guards his extended family's compound in Logar. Eager to find an ally in this place that's meant to be "home," Marwand approaches Budabash the way he would any dog on his American suburban block--and the results are disastrous: Marwand loses a finger and Budabash escapes. The resulting search for the family dog is an expertly told adventure, a ninety-nine-night quest that sends Marwand and his cousins across the landscape of Logar.
About the Author
Jamil Jan Kochai is the author of (Viking, 2019) , a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He was born in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, but he originally hails from Logar, Afghanistan. His short stories and essays have appeared in , and . Currently, he is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
