Vanishing Girl of Kabul

A powerful and poignant memoir about growing up female in Afghanistan, being betrayed by a world that promised to protect women`s rights and how these rights are under threat across the world. When the Taliban first ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, Zahra Joya disguised herself as a boy simply to attend school. After the US-led invasion, her world transformed. Education, opportunity and freedom flourished. Like many Afghans, Zahra dared to believe in a future. She became a journalist and established her own media company to tell the stories of Afghan women. Then, in 2021, the Taliban returned. Decades of hard-won progress vanished overnight. Women were erased from public life once again, and the promises made by the West collapsed into silence. The Vanishing Girl of Kabul is Zahra`s powerful story of betrayal, survival and resistance. Co-written with award-winning journalist, Amie Ferris-Rotman, a longtime friend of both Zahra and Afghanistan, the book blends the intimacy of memoir with the urgency of investigative reporting, exposing the brutal realities of gender-based oppression - not only in Afghanistan, but around the world. Now living in exile in London, Zahra refuses to be silent. This book is her clarion call, a warning to a world too willing to look away.