Negotiating Nation and Female Individualism Between East and West. Aspects of Afghan Society and Their Representation in Nadia Hashimi's "When the Moon Is Low" (2015)

Essay from the year 2023 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, University of Marburg (Marburg Centre for Canadian Studies), language: English, abstract: The manifold reflections of loss of home or migration are complex in the displacement histories and narratives because they contain difficult, untraceable journeys and experiences of immigrants and refugees involved. At present, this also concerns the largest religious community linked to massive migration movements worldwide - the Muslims. All Muslim immigrants coming to Europe, Canada or the United States carry their national, cultural, religious and above all their personal past which taken together create an ideal basis for narrating their stories. Things are worse in their own way when people at present are trying to flee from Afghanistan since the Taliban came back to power in 2021. Most Afghan people trying to escape from their mothercountry carry classical colonial or postcolonial topics such as matters of loss, expulsion, displacement, border crossing, exile, diaspora and home. These are - as in the case with female characters - often linked to intolerance, gender injustice or the inferior role of women in the Muslim world, which at present can be seen in Iran as well. Nadia Hashemi's novel "When the Moon is Low" (2015) is set against this background and offers an impressive story of an Afghan family's escape from the Taliban governed Afghanistan through the eyes of the main character Fereiba Waziri. Fereiba is a bold Afghani woman who decides to leave her homecountry after her husband's assassination by Talibani radicals. Crossing transational boundaries, the novel is a description of the plight of contemporary migrants who are set between the crisis of displacement and emplacement, all told from a female perspective.