Aurora Nilsson

1894 - 1972

Sweden

Aurona Nilsson moved as a recent divorcée to Berlin in the 1920s to study music. There, she met a technology student from Kabul, Afghanistan, called Asim Khan, whom she married. When he was summoned home by his family, she followed him, only to discover, as she wrote in her account, that she was confined to a harem.

Back in Sweden, she wrote the story of her adventure in Flykten från harem (1928; Eng. tr. The Flight from a Harem), which, on account of its detailed descriptions of life at the royal Court and officialdom in Kabul, has become a classic work of literature on Afghanistan. Asim Khan later participated in terror activities against the British and was executed. Aurona Nilsson started a haberdashery in Södertälje and married the ice hockey pioneer Calle Aber.

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