“Papa painted a thousand birds…because the world was falling apart.” So begins this memoir for teen and adult readers by the father-daughter team of Ahmadjan and Maren Amini. Maren grew up in Germany amid her father’s art and stories of his native Afghanistan. The son of farmers from the Panjshir Valley of northern Afghanistan, Ahmadjan was raised by his grandfather after his mother’s death. Fated to become a farmer and herder, he instead applied to a boarding school in Kabul and accepted tuition money from a wealthy relative despite the strings attached in order to pursue his dreams of making art. In the late 1960s Kabul was a major stop on the Hippie Trail, full of young Americans and Europeans searching for cheap drugs and alternative lifestyles. Their psychedelic art fascinated the young artist, who as a university student spent more time making money working for foreign families and spending it on restaurants and concerts than keeping up with his classes. Failing to get a visa to the United States, his new dream, he ended up in Germany, met another immigrant from Afghanistan who became his closest friend, joined a commune, got married to a German woman, tried to talk his way into a prestigious art school in Hamburg, and ended up deported just as a coup toppled Afghanistan’s monarchy.

Over the next decades, Ahmadjan would travel back and forth from Afghanistan to Germany as the Soviets invaded the country and destroyed the villages of his ancestral home in the Panjshir Valley. His desire to liberate his homeland introduced him to the charismatic guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud (whose assassination in 2001 preceded the September 11 terrorist attack in the United States). During the years of resistance to Soviet occupation, Ahmadjan was torn between his artistic ambitions, his devotion to his country, and his responsibilities as the husband and father of a growing family in Germany.

The memoir is consciously structured to parallel the twelfth century Persian Sufi epic poem The Conference of the Birds by Fariduddin Attar. Each section of the graphic memoir is preceded by a portrait of a different bird searching for the Simurgh, the mythical king of the birds. Some are stronger, more confident, more dedicated, and more successful than others. Many do not survive the journey. They are consumed by self-doubt or misfortune beyond their control. Of the thousand birds, only a handful make it to the end.

Humor, including situations such as the two Afghani friends skipping out on their pension in Germany ahead of paying rent, leavens the many serious personal, historical, and philosophical scenes. Similarly, the illustrations range from black-and-white sketches to full color spreads, perfectly complementing the text. Particularly striking are the black-and-white illustrations with spot colors that match the mood and highlight Ahmadjan’s interactions with the birds featured in Attar’s classic poem. In all, this is a unique take on the graphic novel/memoir format and a revealing personal exploration of Afghanistan’s history that goes far beyond the images of war and religious extremism regularly portrayed in TV news programs.

Papa Drew a Thousand Birds: A Memoir

Written and illustrated by Maren and Ahmadjan Amini

Translated from German by Marianne Martens

Levine Querido, November 3, 2026

ISBN 978-1-64614-707-6 (hc)

Reviews:

Comic Crusaders

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Lyn Miller-Lachmann is the author of the YA historical novel Torch (Carolrhoda Lab, 2022), winner of the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature and a 2022 Booklist Editors’ Choice, and the YA verse novel Eyes Open (Carolrhoda Lab 2024), chosen by Booklist as a Top 10 Historical Fiction for Youth, 2024. She wrote the picture book Ways to Play (Levine Querido, 2023), illustrated by Gabriel Alborozo, and co-authored with Zetta Elliott the middle grade verse novel Moonwalking (FSG, 2022). Her nonfiction includes a biography of Temple Grandin in the She Persisted chapter book series from Philomel and Film Makers: 15 Groundbreaking Women Directors (co-authored with Tanisia “Tee” Moore) from Chicago Review Press. She translates books for youth from Portuguese to English, including the 2023 YA graphic novel Pardalita by Joana Estrela, published by Levine Querido, which was named a Batchelder Honor Book in 2024 and the graphic novel Our Beautiful Darkness (Enchanted Lion), by the Angolan author Ondjaki, illustrated by António Jorge Gonçalves.