I Am Malala

Malala Yousafzai was fifteen when a gunman stopped her school bus in Pakistan's Swat Valley on 9 October 2012 and shot her. This memoir, written with the British journalist Christina Lamb and published in October 2013, tells the story behind that day: a childhood spent in a school her father built from nothing, the arrival of the Taliban in the valley, the ban on girls' schooling, the diary she wrote for the BBC at eleven, and her recovery in England. It is also the story of her father, Ziauddin, a teacher and activist who encouraged her to speak.

The book has a prologue, twenty-four chapters in five parts, and an epilogue. Before the Taliban covers her family, the valley and her father's school; The Valley of Death covers the rise of Fazlullah's movement, the closing of the girls' schools and the family's flight from Swat; Three Girls, Three Bullets covers their return, the threats against her and the attack; Between Life and Death covers her treatment in Pakistan and the flight to England; A Second Life covers her recovery in Birmingham. Throughout, Malala explains her campaign in terms of her own faith: she writes that Islam gives every girl and boy the right to an education.

Notes. This summary follows Malala's own account; the judgments about events and people are hers and her father's, and others have described some events differently. The publisher notes that events and conversations are based on the author's memories and that some names were changed. The book ends in August 2013. A version for young readers, written with Patricia McCormick, followed in 2014.