1,000 Nights: Death's Love Letter to Afghanistan by Eli Gardner

1,000 Nights: Death's Love Letter to Afghanistan by Eli Gardner

Winner of 2022 American Fiction Awards-- Visionary Fiction Category
Winner of an Honorable Mention at the L.A. Book Festival

Softcover, 244 pages

Meet Death, and the girl who makes a deal with her.

Half war story, half fairytale, 1000 Nights follows Afghan-American translator Sergeant Zee West as she conducts patrols in Afghanistan. An IED blast separates her from her unit, and she is taken hostage by a man with plans to ransom her to the Taliban for a small fortune. Her desperate journey begins as she attempts to humanize herself to her captor and dissuade him from his agenda. She begins to tell him a story she has penned about a girl who makes a deal with Death and must accomplish 5 seemingly impossible tasks, battling dark genies along the way. Each task represents a sense that binds one to life-- touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste. Yet, every night, Zee intentionally shares only 1 chapter, leaving her captor curious for more, delaying her fate one night at a time.

In this homage to ‘1001 Nights’ (Arabian Nights), Zee is at the mercy of her own story, and the willingness of her captor to open his heart to her words. It is based loosely on things seen by the author in her own 1000 night stay in Afghanistan. It was written to show the world the beautiful and often overlooked side to that country and her people.