When the Moon Is Low

by Nadia Hashimi, Sneha Mathan (Read by), Neil Shah (Read by)

Overview

The unforgettable story of an Afghan family’s escape from the Taliban and perilous trek across Europe to seek asylum, led by one extraordinarily courageous woman. This is the second novel by Nadia Hashimi, the author of last year’s breakout, THE PEARL THAT BROKE ITS SHELL.

Mahmoud’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.

Mahmoud, 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 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. Across the continent Fereiba and Saleem struggle to reunite, and ultimately find a place where they can begin to reconstruct their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781799971320
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 5.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Sneha Mathan spent a peripatetic childhood in India, punctuated by a short spell in the Seychelles. Now fixedly based in Seattle, she works as a voice actor and audiobook narrator. Her audiobook work has received four Earphones Awards, and she is a two-time finalist for the Audie Award.

Neil Shah is an Audie-nominated narrator and winner of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards who has recorded over 150 audiobooks. As a classically trained actor with an MFA from the Old Globe/University of San Diego, he has appeared off Broadway and on regional stages, as well as in film and television. He records from his home studio in Portland, Oregon.

Nadia Hashimi was born and raised in New York and New Jersey. Both her parents were born in Afghanistan and left in the early 1970s, before the Soviet invasion. Nadia is the author of three books for adults, as well as the middle grade novel One Half from the East. She is a pediatrician and lives with her family in the Washington, DC, suburbs. Visit her online at NadiaHashimi.com.

Editorial Reviews

A must-read saga about borders, barriers, and the resolve of one courageous mother fighting to cross over.

the Oprah Magazine O

A must-read saga about borders, barriers, and the resolve of one courageous mother fighting to cross over.

O: the Oprah Magazine