The Storyteller's Daughter

As a child growing up in Tunbridge Wells, Saira's father told her she really came from somewhere else. A fairytale land of heroes and conquerors, princesses and villains: her family's lost homeland, Afghanistan.

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Saira Shah always felt like an outsider. As a child growing up in Britain, she was told that she came from a far away Eastern land, a magical place that her father, the storyteller, would bring exotically to life. When, at the age of twenty-one, Saira set out to discover this magic land for herself, she found a devastated country quite unlike that of her father?s stories. Worse, as a modern Western woman, she felt despised and powerless. Yet despite the brutal shattering of her dream, Saira came to feel that her own heartfelt story belonged to this troubled land.