[2] The fourth of six siblings,[1] Mimi Hirsh was born in Waltham, Massachusetts and raised in nearby Newton,[2] attending Catholic schools and then Boston College where she became an editor for the student magazine, The Heights.
[1] Her father, Edward Hirsh had been the chairman of the English Department at Boston College, and her mother, Margaret (née Kelly) had worked as an administrator at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, a community teaching medical centre in Newton.
[1] Though Hirsh told the Boston College magazine, at the time, that she loved this work, with its politics, writing and excitement, she wrote that she "was about to turn 30 and mortality loomed large" and that she "didn’t want to dodder off into the sunset mumbling about the novels I could have written if I'd tried.
"[1] Kirkus Reviews expressed the opinion that Kabul is "A meaty, invigorating, politically speculative first novel—with a rich ambiance of place and mores, the drama of dusty perils and rumbling tanks, and a clutch of giant family members—intelligent, aching and doomed.
"[5] He added that the author "does a fine job of portraying the tensions felt by younger, middle-class Afghans, torn between their sense of duty and responsibility to a traditional culture and their modern values (women's rights, for example) derived from their exposure to the West.