Reader Reviews
Discover what our readers love about Hameeda's Tryst with Destiny!
This novel is a real page-turner!
Romantic love is tested by the harsh realities of life in war-torn Afghanistan, where the earnest protagonists are obstructed from uniting with their true love by repressive tribal culture. The author convincingly transports us to another time and place where his characters are forced to escape their harrowing lot through overwhelming odds. This story of courage is thoroughly engaging all the way through to the final page. A very satisfying read!
—Kay, Massachusetts
Dramatic and uplifting.
Though it is fiction, "Hameeda's Tryst with Destiny," if you know anything of late 20th and early 21st century conflict history, will automatically fill you with angst. Yet, for the majority of the story, it is also a testament to hope, to love and to the future. You need Hameeda and her grandfather, Abdul Rahman Gafar Khan in your life.I particularly recommend it to anyone who has read the non-fiction book, "I am Malala" by Malala Yousafzai.
—Anonymous, Texas
★★★★★
★★★★★
★★★★★
Wonderfully Written.
A great story, very well told. I can’t believe this is his first novel! I hope there are many more!
—Dan, Massachusetts
★★★★★
Couldn't Put it Down.
Hameeda's Tryst with Destiny keeps you reading as the story of a young, innocent 16 year old girl in Afghanistan, in the 1980's, is unfolding with the turn of every page. Their simple life becomes more and more complicated for Hameeda and her grandfather, her only family and guardian. Political turmoil is growing in their village and country, while she becomes "of age" to marry, causing turmoil in their personal lives as well. The detail in the book educates us about a time and place, we know little about, full of religious and political extremism, great poverty and sacrifice, and lack of education and freedom for its women, that is still happening today.
—Anonymous, Texas
★★★★★
Taking Us Somewhere We've Never Been.
Hameeda’s Tryst with Destiny places us in a world that we’ve read about but that few of us have experienced: 1980s Afghanistan through the eyes of a 16-year-old girl in a burka who spends most of her time behind a curtain looking out her window at the street below her house, paying very careful attention to every detail of what is almost the only world she knows. While spinning a touching love story with many twists and turns, the author simultaneously places us in the beginnings of a frightening fundamentalist wave that is about to take over; in violent encounters with Russian invaders; in cross-border migrations in and out of refugee camps. The author’s use of detail captures images that we are fully able to visualize, and the amount of research that must have been involved is truly phenomenal.
—Sandy, Texas
