A twenty-five-year-old woman travels to Afghanistan after the American intervention to teach French at the University of Kabul, now in ruins. She falls in love with Nathan, a much older and married fellow expatriate. During her eighteen months there, she experiences all of the highs and lows of a secret and illicit love affair. When Nathan promises to leave his wife and marry her, she believes him right up until the moment that he leaves her to return (with his wife) to France.

It is at this point that this lyrical debut novel truly begins. The narrator travels and discovers a quieter side to war-torn Afghanistan, allowing us to peer through all of the rubble and catch glimpses of a poetic and historic beauty far removed from present circumstances. It is this discovery of the soul of Afghanistan that allows her to let go of what held her captive to her unhappy alliance with Nathan. She is then free to undertake a larger journey of the spirit and mind, as she leads us to the walled city of Baku in Azerbaijan, the valleys of Jalalabad, the mythic Khyber Pass, the Buddhas of Bamyan, and the ancient Persian city of Herat. Reflective and meditative, Thobois’s shimmering prose captures the daily life and transcendent places of a far-off culture so different from our own.