The Book Quill

How would you feel if one of your loved ones disappear without a trace and you still receive some unique gift that they give you every year even after their disappearance? Scary isn’t it? The assumptions of what really happened to the person can drive one mad to insanity, and the souvenir reaching you once a year can give anyone sleepless nights. That’s what happens to the poor Henrik Vanger who has been trying to find what happened to his brother’s daughter for 36 years without any success. Harriet Vanger, at the age of 17 disappears from the face of the earth and no matter what resources his uncle uses, he is unable to find her. He feels that the killer, if she has been murdered is sending him the gifts to mock him. After 36 years of agony, he hires an infamous journalist who has been sentenced for libel to try to solve the mystery of his niece’s disappearance. Thus starts a thriller journey when new evidences turn up, and the story altogether takes a new turn. The journalist, Mikae

This book completely welled up my eyes, and in the last ten years of my reading almost like two or three books have done that. This book explores the life of women in Afghanistan during the 20th century, and deeply roots out the extremity of torture and suffering women have to go through each day of their lives. This very powerful book showcases the endearing survival of women in the extreme of situations and still stand strong and powerful. The story revolves around two main characters Mariam and Laila. There is a generation gap between the two, but somehow their futures are intertwined as they get married to a single man, named Rasheed. He is cruel, torturous and everything one can think of a man in the most horrible ways. Mariam is an illegitimate child of a very rich man, who is excluded and lives outside the city with his mother. After her mother commits suicide, her father marries her off to a shoemaker who is 30 years older to her and her never ending agony starts. Rasheed i