My Beautiful Sisters

WINNER OF CHARLES TYRWHITT SPORTS BOOK AWARD 2025 WINNER OF VIKKI ORVICE AWARD FOR WOMEN'S SPORTS WRITING 2025 SHORTLISTED FOR WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 A GUARDIAN AND FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 'Riveting, heart-wrenching and incredibly important . . . an inspirational story for girls and women everywhere' MALALA YOUSAFZAI, Nobel Peace Prize laureate A story of survival, sisterhood and the fight for feminism in the age of the Taliban. August 2021: Kabul falls to the Taliban. Overnight, life for women across Afghanistan changes. The national women's football team faces an imminent threat to their lives, just for playing sport. For Khalida Popal, the team's first captain and co-founder, this is not an unprecedented event. Born in Afghanistan, as a child she fled Taliban rule with her family and grew up in a refugee camp in Pakistan. On her return to Afghanistan, football gave her and her teammates power, comradeship and freedom. But advocating for women's rights in sport put Popal's life increasingly at risk, forcing her to flee the country, this time alone. As a refugee in Denmark, Popal worked to uncover widespread sexual abuse of players by the former president of the Afghanistan Football Federation - forcing FIFA and the government of Afghanistan to act. When Kabul falls Khalida is safe, but her teammates are left behind. Against all the odds, she and a small but mighty network of allies orchestrate an international evacuation strategy to save them. My Beautiful Sisters is a gripping memoir about courage, the power of teamwork against all odds and the existence of hope in dark times.

Argo meets The Bookseller of Kabul in this incredible memoir from the Afghan women's soccer pioneer turned activist and feminist icon who has helped save more than 350 female soccer players from the dangerous rule of the Taliban. "Riveting, heart-wrenching and incredibly important . . . an inspirational story for girls and women everywhere." --MALALA YOUSAFZAI, Nobel Peace Prize laureate A story of survival, sisterhood and the fight for feminism in the age of the Taliban. In August 2021, Kabul fell under the control of the Taliban, a militant political and fundamentalist religious faction. For Khalida Popal, it signaled the beginning of the most important battle of an already extraordinary young life--to get female soccer players out of a city where they faced imminent threat of execution simply for playing sports. Khalida first began playing soccer in a refugee camp in Pakistan after her parents fled Taliban rule. Returning to Afghanistan, she fell deeper in love with the freedom and comradeship soccer provides. As co-founder and first captain of the Afghan women's soccer team, Khalida began using sports to empower young women, and was subjected to intensifying death threats in return. Hounded out of her own country, she continued to support the Afghan women's team, founding the organization Girl Power and exposing widespread sexual abuse of players. From her new home in Denmark, she watched Kabul fall and immediately knew the risk to the players still there. Assembling a small but mighty network of international allies, she began evacuating women whose lives were at risk simply for loving the sport she had done so much to promote. Her teammates. Her sisters. My Beautiful Sisters is a gripping, important memoir, and a compulsively readable one--a harrowing yet ultimately heartening story of survival and sisterhood.

Argo meets The Bookseller of Kabul in this incredible memoir from the Afghan women's soccer pioneer turned activist and feminist icon who has helped save more than 350 female soccer players from the dangerous rule of the Taliban. "Riveting, heart-wrenching and incredibly important . . . an inspirational story for girls and women everywhere." --MALALA YOUSAFZAI, Nobel Peace Prize laureate A story of survival, sisterhood and the fight for feminism in the age of the Taliban. In August 2021, Kabul fell under the control of the Taliban, a militant political and fundamentalist religious faction. For Khalida Popal, it signaled the beginning of the most important battle of an already extraordinary young life--to get female soccer players out of a city where they faced imminent threat of execution simply for playing sports. Khalida first began playing soccer in a refugee camp in Pakistan after her parents fled Taliban rule. Returning to Afghanistan, she fell deeper in love with the freedom and comradeship soccer provides. As co-founder and first captain of the Afghan women's soccer team, Khalida began using sports to empower young women, and was subjected to intensifying death threats in return. Hounded out of her own country, she continued to support the Afghan women's team, founding the organization Girl Power and exposing widespread sexual abuse of players. From her new home in Denmark, she watched Kabul fall and immediately knew the risk to the players still there. Assembling a small but mighty network of international allies, she began evacuating women whose lives were at risk simply for loving the sport she had done so much to promote. Her teammates. Her sisters. My Beautiful Sisters is a gripping, important memoir, and a compulsively readable one--a harrowing yet ultimately heartening story of survival and sisterhood.