Memoir of a Brave Girl
Surabhika Maheshwari
I AM MALALA: THE GIRL WHO STOOD UP FOR EDUCATION AND WAS SHOT BY THE TALIBAN by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2014, 276 pp., 399
February 2014, volume 38, No 2

This book is a story of a young girl who is shot by a Taliban bullet, survives miraculously and lives to tell her tale. Malala Yousafzai is celebrated and recognized as a fearless symbol of education across the globe. Malala is an educational campaigner from the Swat valley, Pakistan. She came to public attention by writing for BBC Urdu about life under the Taliban. Using the pen name of Gul Makai, she wrote about her family’s fight for girls’ education in her community. In October 2012, Malala was catapulted into international recognition when she was targeted by the Taliban and shot at point blank range in the head while returning from school on a bus. She miraculously survives. In honour of her courage and advocacy Malala was honoured with the National Peace Prize in Pakistan in 2011 and the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2013. Dr. Fiona, a British doctor treating her, called her the Mother Teresa of Pakistan. She was short listed for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year and is the youngest ever person nominated for the Noble Peace Prize.

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