75 years of US-led invasions, CIA-sponsored coups, election interference, stay-behind networks, rendition, and weapons testing… all in the name of Pax America, the world’s police.

Housmans is pleased to announce another “History-into-Fiction” event in collaboration with indie publisher Comma Press.

The American Way: Stories of Invasion re-examines US foreign policy with stories that explore the human cost of these interventions on foreign soil, by writers from that soil. For this special online event, Fariba Nawa and Bina Shah, two of the anthology’s contributors will be discussing their stories and the events depicted within.

By presenting events from indigenous, grassroots perspectives, accompanied by afterwords by the historians that consulted on them, this book attempts to bring some clarity back to the history of US interventions.

Speakers

Fariba Nawa is an Afghan-American freelance journalist based in Istanbul. She was born and raised in Afghanistan until she was 9, then fled the Soviet invasion with her family to the U.S. in the 1980s. She authored Afghanistan Inc. (CorpWatch), an oft-cited resource in international debates on the effectiveness of reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. She is also author of Opium Nation (Harper Perennial, 2011), a personal account of the drug trade in Afghanistan and its impact on women. She is the host and chief editor of On Spec podcast. 

Bina Shah is a Karachi-based author of five novels and two collections of short stories. Her latest novel, Before She Sleeps, was published by Delphinium Books in August 2018. A regular contributor to The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Huffington Post, and a frequent guest on the BBC, she has contributed essays and op-eds to Granta, The Independent, and The Guardian, and writes a regular op-ed column for Dawn, Pakistan’s biggest English-language newspaper. She works on issues of women’s rights and female empowerment in Pakistan and across Muslim countries. In 2020, she was awarded the rank of Chevalier in the Ordre des arts et des lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

HOW TO ACCESS THIS ONLINE EVENT

An invitation to this online event will be emailed to you on the day of the event. We will use the email address used to register for this event. Confirmation emails and invitation links sometimes end up in spam folders, so please check there before emailing the shop. Thank you.

TICKET INFORMATION

There are various tickets available for this event: If you’d like a copy of The American Way then choose the book plus entry ticket. If you’d like to support Housmans then please choose a solidarity ticket. There’s also a free access ticket for students, low income and unwaged comrades.

BUY TICKETS FOR THIS EVENT HERE