Vol. 6, Issue 1, Part B (2024)

Afghanistan and its people have been exquisitely depicted in English literature and evolved as a distinctive genre lately. Afghanistan as an Islamic nation has remained controversial in the contemporary world for many decades now; be it for their political construction, social turmoil, or cultural hybridity. Years of war and terrorism, resulting in a plethora of social conflicts have put Afghan women in a precarious state where the women have been left the most defenseless and the worst suffering entities in the whole scenario. The fact that men have since ages, subjugated women according to their will and hence made social norms favorable to one gender, is a concrete fact. Keeping that in view, the powerlessness, muffled voices, and dreamless eyes of women in Afghanistan have been skilfully captured by Hashimi’s in her novel considered for this study. The paper seeks to depict the suffering of Afghan women, their struggles and unheard voices for justice and freedom through a close textual analysis of Nadia Hashimi’s A House without windows. The study aims to discuss the difficulties that the women in the novel undergo, keeping the bold and impactful backdrop of the horrible gender issues, the representations of the struggles of the female characters, and their forced subordination. The irony in the protagonist’s journey from a traditional Afghan wife to that of an inmate in a prison where imprisoned women feel safer than their homes, which are typical of the patriarchal social constructs, is critically as well as philosophically significant.