Nadia Hashimi has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 49 ratings. The most-rated is A House Without Windows.
A House Without Windows
Summary
A vivid, unforgettable story of an unlikely sisterhood - an emotionally powerful and haunting tale of friendship that illuminates the plight of women in a traditional culture from the author of the best-selling The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and When the Moon Is Low. For two decades Zeba was a loving wife, a patient mother, and a peaceful villager. But her quiet life is shattered when her husband, Kamal, is found brutally murdered with a hatchet in the courtyard of their home. Nearly catatonic with shock, Zeba is unable to account for her whereabouts at the time of his death. Her children swear their mother could not have committed such a heinous act. Kamal's family is sure she did and demands justice. Barely escaping a vengeful mob, Zeba is arrested and jailed. As Zeba awaits trial, she meets a group of women whose own misfortunes have also led them to these bleak cells: 30-year-old Nafisa, imprisoned to protect her from an honor killing; 25-year-old Latifa, who ran away from home with her teenage sister but now stays in the prison because it is safe shelter; and 19-year-old Mezhgan, pregnant and unmarried, waiting for her lover's family to ask for her hand in marriage. Is Zeba a cold-blooded killer, these young women wonder, or has she been imprisoned, as they have been, for breaking some social rule? For these women the prison is both a haven and a punishment. Removed from the harsh and unforgiving world outside, they form a lively and indelible sisterhood. Into this closed world comes Yusuf, Zeba's Afghan-born, American-raised lawyer, whose commitment to human rights and desire to help his motherland have brought him back. With the fate of this seemingly ordinary housewife in his hands, Yusuf discovers that, like Afghanistan itself, his client may not be at all what he imagines. A moving look at the lives of modern Afghan women, A House Without Windows is astonishing, frightening, and triumphant.
©2016 Nadia Hashimi (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
When the Moon Is Low
Summary
From the author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell comes an unforgettable story of terror, survival, perseverance, and hope that chronicles one extraordinarily brave Afghan woman's odyssey to save her family and find asylum in the West - a tale of a daring escape, a perilous trek across Europe, and the courage and tenacity of one defiant woman. Mahmood's passion for his wife, Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she's ever known. But their happy middle-class world - a life of education, work, and comfort - implodes when their country is engulfed in war and the Taliban rises to power. Mahmood, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba has one hope to survive: She must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister's family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba and her children make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness. Exhausted and brokenhearted but undefeated, Fereiba manages to smuggle them as far as Greece. But in a busy market square, their fate takes a frightening turn when her teenage son, Saleem, becomes separated from the rest of the family. Faced with an impossible choice, Fereiba pushes on with her daughter and baby while Saleem falls into the shadowy underground network of undocumented Afghans who haunt the streets of Europe's capitals. Fereiba and Saleem struggle to reunite and ultimately find a place where they can begin to reconstruct their lives.
©2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2015 Blackstone Audio
Sparks Like Stars
Summary
“Suspenseful...emotionally compelling. I found myself eagerly following in a way I hadn’t remembered for a long time, impatient for the next twist and turn of the story." (NPR) An Afghan American woman returns to Kabul to learn the truth about her family and the tragedy that destroyed their lives in this brilliant and compelling novel from the best-selling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, The House Without Windows, and When the Moon Is Low. Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the 10-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives. Smuggled out of the palace by a guard named Shair, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America. In her new country, Sitara takes on a new name - Aryana Shepherd - and throws herself into her studies, eventually becoming a renowned surgeon. A survivor, Aryana has refused to look back, choosing instead to bury the trauma and devastating loss she endured. New York, 2008: Thirty years after that fatal night in Kabul, Aryana’s world is rocked again when an elderly patient appears in her examination room - a man she never expected to see again. It is Shair, the soldier who saved her, yet may have murdered her entire family. Seeing him awakens Aryana’s fury and desire for answers - and, perhaps, revenge. Realizing that she cannot go on without finding the truth, Aryana embarks on a quest that takes her back to Kabul - a battleground between the corrupt government and the fundamentalist Taliban - and through shadowy memories of the world she loved and lost. Bold, illuminating, heartbreaking, yet hopeful, Sparks Like Stars is a story of home - of America and Afghanistan, tragedy and survival, reinvention and remembrance, told in Nadia Hashimi’s singular voice.
©2021 Nadia Hashimi (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
The Sky at Our Feet
Summary
This #ownvoices novel by best-selling author Nadia Hashimi tells the affecting story of an Afghan-American boy who believes his mother has been deported. For fans of Inside Out and Back Again and Counting by 7s. Jason has just learned that his Afghan mother has been living illegally in the United States since his father was killed in Afghanistan. Although Jason was born in the US, it's hard to feel American now when he's terrified that his mother will be discovered - and that they will be separated. When he sees his mother being escorted from her workplace by two officers, Jason feels completely alone. He boards a train with the hope of finding his aunt in New York City, but as soon as he arrives in Penn Station, the bustling city makes him wonder if he's overestimated what he can do. After an accident lands him in the hospital, Jason finds an unlikely ally in a fellow patient. Max, a whip-smart girl who wants nothing more than to explore the world on her own terms, joins Jason in planning a daring escape out of the hospital and into the skyscraper jungle - even though they both know that no matter how big New York City is, they won't be able to run forever.
©2018 Nadia Hashimi (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers