Mandana Hendessi – författare

They called it Badam Bagh – the Almond Garden. But inside Kabul's central women's prison, nothing bloomed. Nothing except rage. When Niloofar, a teenage inmate, sets herself on fire, the authorities call it a suicide attempt. But two women - Sultan, a feared inmate who once killed her abusive husband, and Setara, a teacher and gifted artist imprisoned for a crime she did not commit - begin to suspect that the fire was not just a tragedy, but a protest. As they uncover a web of abuse and corruption, they draw in fellow inmates Sheyda and Geisha along the way. Together, they risk everything to expose a sinister secret that stretches far beyond the prison walls.In a land where fire once symbolised truth and divine power, their silence becomes the flame that sets the system ablaze. Set against a brutal system built to erase them, The Almond Garden of Kabul is a haunting story of resistance, remembrance, and the fire women carry within them.

The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East. An Indigenous people from the Mesopotamian plains and highlands in what is now Southeast Turkey, Northeast Syria, Northern Iraq, northwest Iran and Southwest Armenia, they are the largest stateless people in the world. Denied a national identity, their culture and language have been banned or suppressed throughout the centuries and theirs is a story of resistance and survival.This book offers a contemporary overview and critical analysis of the Kurds quest for national identity and statehood from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the modern day. Kurdish nationalism has taken many forms and had to endure periods of rebellion, acceptance, oppression and ethnic cleansing. Mandana Hendessi outlines the contours of the political struggle and military conflict that continue to shape the lives of a people that occupy one of the most contested regions in the world.