Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

You know, from time to time, I find a novel from a press that I'm only a little familiar with, and a novelist I'm not familiar

with at all. And today, that novelist is Fosia Karimi, and the press is deep vellum. They are both the author and the press in Texas. This book by my guest,

Fosia Karimi, is in every way a remarkable book that's called Above Us the Milky Way. Its subtitle or its descriptor is an illuminated

alphabet, and the author once again is Fosia Karimi. The cover shows the nighttime sky and many, many stars and galaxies.

As I read the book, I learned that Felizia had created an absolutely unique event.

I don't think I've ever seen it in a novel before.

Can you talk about what happens to the sky in this novel, Fosia?

Well, the sky, I mean, the sky is always there, the moon is always there, the sun is always shining

down, and the book which is about a family, a family of two parents and five young daughters,

having to suddenly deal with something that basically falls down from the sky,

which is the Soviet army coming out of nowhere to take over their country, their city,

Kabul, and the sky suddenly that was filled with sunshine and the sound of birds and nature is filled with bombs falling.

And so the novel begins there at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

And the family has to soon, within a year that they leave and they come to California, which brings color and

sunshine back to them because it is, after all, Southern California. It's where I grew up.

...