I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan

Author: Pan Macmillan Editorial Team

ISBN: 9780374535186

Price: Rs. 919.00 • ✓ 100% Genuine Publisher Edition

Book Overview

I Am the Beggar of the World presents an eye-opening collection of clandestine poems by Afghan women.Because my love's American,blisters blossom on my heart.Afghans revere poetry, particularly the high literary forms that derive from Persian or Arabic. But the poem above is a folk couplet―a landay, an ancient oral and anonymous form created by and for mostly illiterate people: the more than 20 million Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. War, separation, homeland, love―these are the subjects of landays, which are brutal and spare, can be remixed like rap, and are powerful in that they make no attempts to be literary.From Facebook to drone strikes to the songs of the ancient caravans that first brought these poems to Afghanistan thousands of years ago, landays reflect contemporary Pashtun life and the impact of three decades of war. With the U.S. withdrawal in 2014 looming, these are the voices of protest most at risk of being lost when the Americans leave.After learning the story of a teenage girl who was forbidden to write poems and set herself on fire in protest, the poet Eliza Griswold and the photographer Seamus Murphy journeyed to Afghanistan to learn about these women and to collect their landays. The poems gathered in I Am the Beggar of the World express a collective rage, a lament, a filthy joke, a love of homeland, an aching longing, a call to arms, all of which belie any facile image of a Pashtun woman as nothing but a mute ghost beneath a blue burqa.

Edition details: English, 320 pages. Reference ISBN: 9780374535186.

About the Author

Pan Macmillan Editorial Team is an acclaimed author whose published works are celebrated internationally for their insight, narrative skill, and enduring reader appeal.

Why Readers Pick This Edition

• You’ll love how this sweet mini adventure gently teaches gratitude in a way young children truly understand. With the familiar, lovable Pout-Pout Fish, your child learns how noticing the good things around them can change their mood and their day. The bright illustrations, simple language, and short length make it perfect for bedtime or classroom read-alouds. It’s a comforting, positive story that builds emotional awareness, encourages thankfulness, and helps little readers feel seen, understood, and happy—one thankful moment at a time.
• Published by Pan Macmillan / International Publishers.
• Language: English.
• Page count: 320.

Catalog Description

I Am the Beggar of the World presents an eye-opening collection of clandestine poems by Afghan women.Because my love's American,blisters blossom on my heart.Afghans revere poetry, particularly the high literary forms that derive from Persian or Arabic. But the poem above is a folk couplet―a landay, an ancient oral and anonymous form created by and for mostly illiterate people: the more than 20 million Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. War, separation, homeland, love―these are the subjects of landays, which are brutal and spare, can be remixed like rap, and are powerful in that they make no attempts to be literary.From Facebook to drone strikes to the songs...

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