This was excellent, and I'm happy to know (through Googling, once I finished the book) that the author has been reunited with her young son. They should never have been separated, and the horrible behaviour of Qaderi's ex-husband - divorcing her by text, what a cowardly tool! - is frankly indicative of the terrible toll that fundamentalist religion can take on both men and women. I say that with mouth pursed, trying to be fair in that the temptation to hurt those weaker than you when society says it's fine to do so must be hard to resist, but for goodness sake... all the gumption in that family was clearly with Qaderi.

The choice to refuse the limitations of life in Afghanistan for a writing career outside that country seems an easy one, at first glance, but having to leave behind a baby in order to do so is a high price. Especially when that child is told that their mother is dead, and the courts side with the father in removing the mother entirely from a child's life. There's that myth, isn't there, of the maternal pelican plucking out its last feather and giving its last drop of blood for its chick, but that's always struck me as horrifying. Women are more than vessels, and self-determination and the freedom to excel and fight for the rights of oneself and others can - and sometimes should - outweigh maternal sacrifice. Not having children myself, that's easy for me to say. It must be immeasurably harder to do, but Qaderi's faith in literacy and its connection to women's rights is both profound and inspiring.