Delusions of Paradise: Escaping the Life of a Taliban Fighter

When Maiwand Banayee was 16, he wanted to become a suicide bomber for the Taliban. In this inspiring tale of survival and self-discovery, the reader will follow Maiwand’s journey down a dark path and his ultimate redemption. Growing up in Kabul amid the Afghan wars, he witnessed atrocities that no child should ever see - rotting corpses, starving families, a neighborhood torn apart. He escaped to a refugee camp in Pakistan, where religious militants began the gradual grooming of Maiwand and other Afghan boys. These confused and traumatized children were indoctrinated, radicalized and prepared to die in the name of a religious war. But Maiwand escaped this life. Fleeing Afghanistan, he had a life-altering crisis of faith, confidence and meaning, finding new purpose and rebuilding himself. Maiwand taught himself how to read and write in English, and here tells his astonishing story in crystalline prose. Delusions of Paradise offers a powerful warning about the dangers of radical religion, and is a stunning celebration of self-determination and redemption from an important new voice.

Maiwand Banayee was born in in Kabul at the onset of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. By the time he was twelve the country was engulfed in civil war and he fled to a refugee camp, where he enrolled in a madrassa and joined the Taliban. At 22 he rejected Islamic extremism and sought asylum in the UK, eventually living in Ireland before returning to England. He has been published in Stinging Fly and War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities. This is his first book.