Absolutely fantastic read. The first chapter, titled "The End", threw me off and the book proved to be a page-turner right until the end. Set against the incredibly scenic background of Pakistan, the book explores globally relevant values of family and friendship in a setting often stereotyped as "the Badlands". So vividly descriptive that I could almost feel the fresh mountain air on my face, smell the cooked tea, hear the cheering boys and at the end, smile through my ache. Highly recommended for all ages.
A compelling and hopeful young adult novel that reinforces the universality of the bonds of friendship, love, and family, The Bubble Kids is an engaging, pointed, and educational must-read for North Americans who only know of Pakistan via media oversimplification and caricature.
The story explores the soon-to-be intertwined lives of brothers Sher and Ali, in mountainous rural Pakistan, and friends Adam and Omar, privileged kids in Karachi. The 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States spark change in all of their lives. Sher and Ali’s family struggles to make ends meet as their region slides into economic decline. A mysterious, bearded stranger and roving bands of armed men rumored to be Taliban fighters threaten to bring political instability and personal hardship to all of them. Meanwhile, in the city, Adam and Omar try to retain a semblance of normalcy while their parents, teachers, and neighbors are consumed by the news and debate about terrorism, the Taliban, and Islamic fundamentalism. As violence in the region ramps up, the boys are expelled from their bubble of comfort to face a terrifying challenge involving Taliban insurgents.
What’s most striking about the book is the familiarity of the boys’ day-to-day experience, even for a reader whose life circumstances couldn’t be more different. They are distracted by thoughts of sports tryouts and pretty girls. They navigate their pending transition to adulthood with a recognizable mixture of optimism and frustration, wanting protection while feeling hypersensitive to being treated like the children they no longer feel they are.
Chowdhry does a very good job of conveying the kids complex sets of circumstances as she paints a vivid portrait of innocent Pakistani people facing the terror of a fringe, fundamentalist group. This is a perspective not often seen, and the author balances its elements well by using characters from diverse backgrounds. A well-balanced and often powerful story recommended for younger teens and history buffs.
Naheed Chowdhry, recently ranked on the Amazon.com best-seller list with the new book, Driven, co-authored with Brian Tracy.
Dubai, UAE – November 3, 2017 – Naheed Chowdhry recently joined a select group of business experts and entrepreneurs from around the world, along with success expert, Brian Tracy, to co-write the book Driven, released on September 7, 2017 by leading business book publisher, CelebrityPress® LLC, that publishes books from ThoughtLeaders® around the world.
On the day of the release, Driven reached best-seller status on Amazon.com – reaching as high as #17 in the “Direct Marketing” category. Naheed Chowdhry contributed a chapter titled, “The Almost Superwoman,” that has helped the book reach optimal best-seller placement and will help readers gain similar success in their endeavors.
CelebrityPress® describes the book:
Self-Improvement and success are not qualities dropped in our laps. Occasionally, we might win the lottery or stumble into an opportunity, but the odds are not good. The most reliable method for improving one’s position and to succeed in life is to make it happen yourself.
While thoughtful actions do not guarantee success, they make good results likely. Most successful people go through similar difficulties to all of us at the start, but they proceed to make decisions focused on their vision. Even with knowledge, planning and passion, success is attainable but not guaranteed – there could still be missing elements.
To be successful in private or public careers, or following some other desirable path, we are advised to formulate our goals, chart the way forward, and take action now. You need to be DRIVEN! To summarize the counsel of General George Patton: “A good plan today is better than a perfect one tomorrow.”
The CelebrityExperts® in this book wish you to succeed. These authors have experienced success in their various fields. For your success and satisfaction, you can move forward with their help. So, do not procrastinate, go for it!
One of the qualities of top men and women is that they are extremely self-reliant. ~ Brian Tracy
After such a successful release, Naheed Chowdhry will be recognized by The National Academy of Best-Selling Authors™, an organization that honors authors from many of the leading independent best-seller lists.
Click HERE to order a copy of Driven.
A portion of the royalties earned from Driven will be given to Entrepreneur’s International Foundation, a not for profit organization dedicated to creating awareness for charitable causes.
About Naheed Chowdhry:
Born and brought up in Pakistan, Naheed began her corporate career as a marketer with Unilever, moving on to Mondelez, Groupe Bel and The Hershey Company. Over the last couple of decades, Naheed has worked and/or lived in Asia, Australia, the UK, China, Russia, North Africa and the Middle East.
Today, Naheed’s company, IWill, leverages her span of experience to customize and develop best practices and learnings for her corporate clients, providing commercially viable growth accelerators– such as crafting and roadmapping strategies and customing marketing and sales processes.
Naheed is also channeling her workplace softskill learnings into developing a corporate gender-parity platform, IWill.global. She has always been passionate about the welfare of women in the workplace, advocating and co-developing the one of the first daycare centres at Unilever globally. This along with her own experiences as well as those of friends, made her determined to turn well-intentioned ivory tower speeches into tangible solutions for women anywhere in the corporate world. Naheed also believes that only the inclusion of both men and women can ultimately deliver tangible results.
IWill has gained interest and support from many gender-parity advocates around the world, as well as from the UN Women Council. As a result, Naheed is also a UN Working Group Member for Youth and Gender Equality and a UN Women Leadership Taskforce Member. An Adler-accredited coach, Naheed enjoys mentoring and in the spirit of sharing her knowledge and experience, she has been appointed a Mentor for the Queen’s Young Leaders’ Programme – an initiative by the University of Cambridge to mentor selected young leaders from 60 countries.
On the personal side, Naheed is mother to 4 young global nomads who keep her on her toes. They have taught Naheed to grow from a rigid, perfectionist-approach to a more flexible, solution-oriented approach. Naheed uses this insight to help shift mindsets from a victim to a doer approach; to approach every challenge with a “how do we crack this” vs. a “can we crack this” approach; and to help her clients and teams explore and adopt both conventional and unconventional ways of accelerating growth.
Naheed is a published author of a Young Adults novel, The Bubble Kids, an endeavour she undertook to illustrate to her children how the global values of friendship, hope and trust can span any divide. In her spare time, Naheed enjoys doing Improv, travelling, horse-riding and adrenalin-rush activities that push her to overcome her fears.
