An Exploration Of Prison Ideas In Nadia Hashimi’s A House Without Windows

Abstract

The present study investigates the ideas of prison in Nadia Hashimi’s A House without Windows.  Her works offer readers a window into everyday life in Afghanistan through her interesting women characters and age-appropriate conversations about gender expectations and roles in different countries. Her novels span generations and continents. The famous works of Hashimi are The Pearl That Broke Its Shell (2014), When the Moon is Low (2015), A House Without Windows (2016), One Half from the East (2016), Sparks Like Stars (2017), The Sky at our feet (2018). This study focuses on only the work A House without Windows. The author exhibits the ideas of prison through the protagonist, Zeba. The days behind the bars of a dark prison and the view of a small window bring light and air inside the prison are symbolic premonitions of her hopeful future. “Prison” is ironic in A House without Windows, it represents Kabul’s women’s prison, Chil Mahtab which acts as an extended home and even more than home, peaceful heaven for Zeba, a mother of four who finds her free space in prison and gives up her guilty life for killing her husband, finds her new friendship, self-awakening, self-recovery, finding family and identity. Thus the novel is no wonder the bestseller that showcases the family, suffering, guilt, resistance, silence, and self-discovery of Afghan Womanhood. The methodology of the study adopts the theory of panopticon proposed by Michel Foucault to illustrate the ideas of prison in Hashimi’s work. The results of the study, are compared and discussed with other studies concerning prison ideas. Finally, the findings of the study explore that prison ideas exist in the work.