Mimi Hirsh

Mary Elizabeth Hirsh, better known as Mimi Hirsh (1947/8 – 8 April 2016) was an American novelist who wrote under the pen name, M.E. Hirsh. She was born in Waltham, Massachusetts and raised in nearby Newton.

Hirsh is best known for her "critically-acclaimed" novel Kabul and Dreaming Back, and for her work in championing cultural causes in Boston's South End.

Wendy Smith, in The New York Times was satisfied with the factual background presented in Kabul, but was of the opinion that the principal characters are too "spoiled and egocentric", and that though this may be historically accurate, the author fails to "elicit our sympathy for such unappealing characters."

Theodore L. Eliot Jr., who was United States Ambassador to Afghanistan from 1973 to 1978, replied to the review in The New York Times. Eliot stated that he had been asked to read the book and check the accuracy of historical facts. He refuted the reviewer's assertion that the last pre-Communist government had "collapse in corruption", and stated that M. E. Hirsh had written no such thing. Eliot defended the author, saying that he "found her treatment of the overthrow of that government impressively sensitive to the subtle forces that were in play." The reviewer pointed out that "fiction can often make remote realities more immediate, and M. E. Hirsh's novel is a heartfelt and commendable attempt to personalize and make sense of the Machiavellian intrigues leading up to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan." and that though the book is "inconsistently dramatic, [...] it's never hard to pick up, and often hard to put down."

Publishers Weekly expressed the opinion that "Readers who want a straightforward, gripping yarn are advised to look elsewhere; those interested in the issues Hirsh raises—and able to bear the prose's intermittent elliptical pretentiousness—may find this mystery-with-a-message worth their while."

Works Novels Kabul (Atheneum, 2 June 1986) Dreaming Back (Atheneum, 11 October 1993)

Reviews Kara Kush by Idries Shah (Los Angeles Times, 24 August 1986) Soviet Expansion in the Third World: Afghanistan: A Case Study by Nasir Shansab (Los Angeles Times, 28 June 1987)