Books like Homebody/Kabul by Tony Kushner

Set in Kabul, this play examines the current-day Afghanistan, its long, tortured history, and its complex relationship with the West. As the story unfolds, the Homebody, an emotionally imprisoned English woman, finds refuge and escape in the alternate world of Afghanistan, which she exoticizes in her mind's eye with the help of an out-of-date tourist guide book. Her mysterious disappearance prompts an ensuing search by her ineffectual husband and her emotionally detached daughter, who arrive in the foreign land unprepared for the adventures that await them. The story blurs the lines between the real and the unreal, the political and the personal, the public and the private, and the psychological and the sociological, provoking, entertaining, and reconstituting language in a way that is nothing short of astonishing.

First publish date: 2002