Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes behind the Veil
About this audiobook
Most Westerners now working in Afghanistan spend their time tucked inside the wall of a military compound or embassy. Deborah Rodriguez is one of the very few who lives life smack in the middle of Kabul. Now, Rodriguez tells the story of the beauty school she founded and the vibrant women who were her students there.
When Rodriguez opened the Kabul Beauty School, she not only empowered her students with a new sense of autonomy—in the strictly patriarchal culture, the beauty school proved a small haven—but also made some of the closest friends of her life. Woven through the book are the stories of her students. There is the newlywed who must fake her own virginity, the twelve-year-old bride who has been sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, and the wife of a member of the Taliban who pursues her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. All of these women have a story to tell, and all of them bring their stories to the Kabul Beauty School, where, along with Rodriguez herself, they learn the art of perms, of friendship, and of freedom.
About the author
Deborah Rodriguez is a hairdresser, motivational speaker, and bestselling author. She taught at and later directed the Kabul Beauty School in Afghanistan, where she also owned the Oasis Salon and the Cabul Coffee House. She currently lives in Mazatlán, Mexico.
Kristin Ohlson is a freelance journalist, essayist, and fiction writer based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has been published in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, O, The Oprah Magazine, More magazine, New Scientist, Gourmet, Eating Well, and many others. She was awarded a major Ohio Arts Council fellowship for fiction in 2003 and a Creative Workforce Fellowship for fiction in 2009; her memoir, Stalking the Divine, won the American Society of Journalists and Authors’ Best Nonfiction Book Award.
Bernadette Dunne has been honored to narrate the work of some of the finest fiction and nonfiction writers of our time, including Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, and Sandra Day O'Connor. The winner of more than a dozen Earphones Awards and a three-time Audie Award nominee, she has voiced countless bestsellers, including Memoirs of a Geisha, The Devil Wears Prada, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She studied at The Royal National Theater and lives in New York.
