Defiant Dreams

A searing, deeply personal memoir of a tenacious Afghan girl who educated herself behind closed doors and fought her way to a new life.   “Stories like this inspire me. Seeing the way people like Sola Mahfouz think about the world reinforces my optimism about the future.”―BILL GATES Sola Mahfouz was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1996, the year the Taliban took over her country for the first time. They banned television and photographs, presided over brutal public executions, a