The World Is a Carpet

“Like so many pieces of yarn, [Badkhen] weaves the words of Persian poets, Western explorers, contemporary journalists and scholars into her narrative, enriching her own account with those that came before… a powerful, unsentimental study of life persisting in extreme conditions. Perhaps the greatest testament to her success is that, upon reading the final page, the reader wonders how the people populating her narrative are faring, and desperately hopes that they are all right.” –The New York Observer

“Capture[s] the fatalistic ambience of a place where opium addiction is rampant, mobile phones are an impossible luxury and the Taliban lurk in the shadows.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Transporting… even in this harshest of environments, Badkhen is able to capture kinship, laughter, and merriment… At the risk of spouting clichés (but don’t they become such because of the universal truths buried within?), Badkhen weaves her own literary magic.” –Christian Science Monitor

“Intrepid… Season by season, rite by rite, encounter by encounter, thread by illuminating thread, Badkhen weaves a glorious prose carpet that poignantly captures the surface and the soul of life in Oqa, and in all the Oqas that grace the loom of Afghanistan.” –National Geographic

“This book will leave you entertained, informed and heartbroken. It will allow you not only to imagine another place but also to bear witness to a community of cultural producers and preservers of the highest skill whose women are able to create objects of beauty amid poverty, hardship and bloodshed.” –Toronto Star

“Anna Badkhen is the latest chronicler to show how great beauty can come out of great deprivation… borders on the sublime. The World is a Carpet is a well-spun tale of a remote world we rarely see.” –Financial Times

“The World Is a Carpet will give readers a better understanding of this mysterious land and the courageous and determined people who live there… gorgeous… a lovely treasure unearthed from beneath those shifting desert sands.” –Dayton Daily News

“Badkhen makes friends and shares their stories, drawing readers into this small village where the dream of wealth is hope for a life without suffering… A beautifully written book of eternal heartbreak.” –Booklist (starred review)

“Badkhen gains astonishing access… More travelogue than reportage, her prose is rich and unhurried, evoking the harshness of the desolate landscape. Oqa’s isolation means Osama bin Laden may be unknown, but the Taliban is not; their presence an inescapable fact of life, one that propels Badkhen’s story to a simple yet chilling dénouement.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A fearless author regards the Afghans on their own terms… Enormously detailed and moving…­ a dense, intimate portrayal of an ancient people.” –Kirkus

“In an age when writers too often see Afghanistan from behind guarded compound walls, Badkhen places herself alone, for a year, in rural Afghanistan. This perspective—animated by her love of the country, and her hosts—yields a remarkable account of the rhythms, the wit, and the energy of village life.” –Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between

“Nearly a hundred and eighty degrees around the globe, and even farther from our imagining, Anna Badkhen captures with an unerring eye—and just as powerfully, in the haunting cadences of her narrative—the strange, harsh beauty of an unvanquished way of life.” –William Langewiesche, author of Sahara Unveiled, American Ground, and The Outlaw Sea