Terry Glavin to launch new book in Ottawa on October 12th

Come From The Shadows: The Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan by Terry Glavin
October 12, 2011, 7:00 PM
Army Officer's Mess
149 Somerset
Admission: $15.00 (students $10.00)

Tickets for Terry's book launch are now available at Compact Music (190 Bank, 785 Bank), and Collected Works (1242 Wellington).

An award-winning journalist overturns western stereotypes as he takes readers into the Afghanistan that exists “outside the wire” and introduces the people whose defiant courage offers hope for the future.

Far from the Taliban’s grim desert strongholds, the country we visit with Terry Glavin is a surprisingly welcoming place, hidden away in alleys and narrow streets that bustle with blacksmiths, gem hawkers and spice merchants. This is the unseen Afghanistan, reawakening from decades of savagery and bloodletting.

Glavin shows us how events have unfolded in Afghanistan since September 11, 2001. Travelling with fluent interpreters and Afghan human rights activists, Glavin meets people from many walks of life—key political figures, teachers, journalists, farmers, students, burqa-shrouded women and soccer players—and in these pages they speak for themselves. And in the life story of Afghan-Canadian writer, translator and activist Abdul Rahim Parwani, he finds the story of Afghanistan’s agonies over the past 30 years.

Celebrated as “a critical voice in the dialogue that sustains a civil society,” Glavin is active with the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee and is increasingly seen as an expert on Canada’s role in Afghanistan. He is also one of the best writers we have.

Come from the Shadows mounts a passionately, marvellously readable challenge to the usual depiction of the war in Afghanistan. What, Glavin asks, has made the West incapable of hearing the voices of Afghans at the forefront of the global struggle against slavery, misogyny and tyranny? His answers are often unexpected and always illuminating.

Reviews

"Glavin’s forensic demolition of pious myths about Afghanistan and fierce defence of liberal values is persuasive and exhilarating."
Ophelia Benson, co-author of Why Truth Matters, Jul 13, 2011

“The Afghan people have friends around the world who have courageously joined us in our fight for our freedom and civil liberties, but few have been as devoted to our cause as Terry Glavin. His journalism gives our silenced voices the power to be heard in the West.”
Fawzia Koofi, Afghan MP and author of Letters to My Daughters, Jun 27, 2011

"The best journalism exists to refute self-serving and self-satisfied prejudices. With reporting from the ground and historical scholarship, Terry Glavin demolishes our illusions about Afghanistan, and produces a book that is at once an assault on received wisdom and a humane defence of the rights of subjugated peoples."
Nick Cohen, author of What's Left?, Jun 22, 2011

"Terry Glavin is the West's most eloquent advocate of the cause of Afghan liberty. His voice is a powerful counterweight to the many others who relentlessly counsel abdication of that cause."
Sohrab Ahmari, co-editor of Re-Orient, a forthcoming anthology of essays by young Mideast reformers, Jun 22, 2011

About Terry Glavin

Terry Glavin is the author of six books and the co-author of four. He has won more than a dozen literary and journalism awards, including the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. He has been hailed as “one of the finest journalists writing anywhere in the English language” (Canadian Forum) and “one of the prophets of our time” (Literary Review of Canada). Glavin is a co-founder of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, and he has been described by the National Post as “one of Canada’s leading voices in support of our Afghanistan campaign.”

Glavin is also the editor of Transmontanus Books. He has been a reporter, editor and columnist for the Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail. His essays in cultural criticism, science writing and travel writing have appeared in journals and magazines such as Democratiya, the National Post, SEED and Canadian Geographic. In 2009 he was the recipient of the British Columbia Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. Glavin is the writer for the exhibit Unsung Heroes of Afghanistan, on view in 2010-11 across Canada, the U.S. and Europe