“The female most blessed is she that has never been born! Next to her in happiness is the female who dies in infancy!”

These are the startling lines from write Taslima Nasrine’s moving autobiography Meyebela: My Bengali Girlhood — A Memoir of Growing up Female in a Muslim World.

Originally seized when it was first published in 1999, the book is published in two volumes. In the first part, Nasrine remembers her life from early childhood in the mid-1960s until age 12 in Bangladesh. Nasrine eventually becomes a physician and activist, and writes about 18 books, most of which were banned in her home country. The author is fearless and unapologetic in telling how religion and culture can permit and encourage mistreatment of women.

Her mother is in a miserable marriage and turns to religion to find some solace. She believes school is unimportant and the only thing that matters is being a devout Muslim. Nasrine’s mother tries to stops her from doing homework, fights with her over wearing a burka and beats her if she won’t do as asked. Her father is a doctor and often cruel to his family, though he is far less religious and values education.

When Nasrine reaches puberty, her world changes. She is not allowed to go outside and most of the girls her age are married off to much older men. She provides rich details of culture, food, people and even of war. Details on the caste system and living conditions of the poor are painful to read.

The book is well written and provides a good understanding of what life is like for girls in some parts of the world and about religious extremism. It’s a must read for adults.

In Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Robert D. Kaplan offers a unique perspective on Afghan issues. The book covers the mujahidin-Russian war during the 1980s and the period after the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan. Kaplan gives surprising accounts of the everyday lives of guerrillas and how they never complained about their living conditions or injuries. At one point, he states that women don’t exist in Afghan society, it is a world of men.

We learn from the book how refugee camps on the Pakistan-Afghanistan boarders become the breeding ground of the mujahidins. In Afghanistan, you can see the combination of primitive fighters with the most technologically advanced weapons. The author travelled with guerilla fighters, sharing their food and shelter, and witnessing their determination.

According to Kaplan, the mujahidin are not religious fanatics but peasants reacting to the invasion of their land. There is no concept of paying money to the fighters because they don’t understand about taking salaries for fighting war.

The author’s opinion is that the United States made a mistake in outsourcing the war to Pakistan and was forced to believe whatever the Pakistani government told it. The Pakistani intelligence service kept providing false and fabricated information to American intelligence. Though the book was written about war in the 1980s, it is relevant to today’s circumstances. This is another good read for adults

A Good Read is a column by Tri-City librarians that is published every Wednesday. Minakshi Sidhu is an information services librarian with Fraser Valley Regional Library.