Shooting Kabul

Shooting Kabul is a middle-grade novel published in 2010 by American author N. H. Senzai. In July 2001, 11-year-old Fadi Nurzai and his family flee Afghanistan, where the Taliban are taking power, to live in San Francisco. While boarding the truck in Kabul that will take them across the Pakistani border, Fadi loses his six-year-old sister, Mariam, in the melee, and she is left behind. The novel focuses on Fadi’s struggle with his conscience over losing his sister, his transition to fitting in at an American high school, and his coming of age as a young man. Shooting Kabul is the first of the three-book series The Kabul Chronicles and is in part based on the author’s husband’s experience of fleeing Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in 1979. The novel won numerous state awards and was an NPR Backseat Book Club pick. This guide uses the Kindle edition of the text, and the references are for location numbers in the electronic text.

Plot Summary

The novel is written in the limited third-person past tense and follows the protagonist, 11-year-old sixth grader Fadi Nurzai. Most of the story takes place in San Francisco, California, where Fadi’s family emigrates after fleeing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.