 Malala Yousafzai now lives and goes to school in the UK 
 
 Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai was shot last year by the Taliban for campaigning for defying a ban on female education - and now the group is threatening to kill her again. Seven days after the Pakistani Taliban shot her in the head, Malala Yousafzai woke up confused in a place that wasn't home. But for me it was hard and for that reason I wanted to become educated and empower myself with knowledge." The book excerpt describes how she gradually regained her sight and her voice and was reunited with her parents. She knew that her way of life was under threat. When a journalist from BBC Urdu asked her father about young people who might be willing to give their perspective on life under the Taliban, he suggested Malala. During an interview with the BBC's Panorama, Malala said that winning the prize would be "a great opportunity" but that universal education remained her true goal. No-one thought the Taliban would target a child. The last thing she recalled on October 9, 2012, the day she was shot, was sitting with her friends on a bus as it rounded an army checkpoint on the way to school in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan. "Then I realized that people had spared my life. Friends told her that a masked gunman boarded the bus asked "Who is Malala?" "She accepted that she attacked Islam so we we tried to kill her, and if we get another chance we will definitely kill her and that will make us feel proud. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said the group stands by its decision to target 16-year-old Malala who he said has "targeted and criticised Islam". That clinical opinion would be vital to Malala's future. Malala was treated at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham 
 
 Malala's first thought was "Thank God I'm not dead" as she woke up terrified in a UK hospital after a Taliban gunman shot her in the head, according to extracts from the book published in the Sunday Times. "I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was that I was in a hospital and I could see nurses and doctors," she says. "I thanked God - 'O Allah, I thank you because you have given me a new life and I am alive.'" "Rehanna, the Muslim chaplain, said millions of people and children around the world had supported me and prayed for me," Malala writes. Malala addressed the United Nations in July on her 16th birthday 
 
 "If I win Nobel Peace Prize, it would be a great opportunity for me, but if I don't get it, it's not important because my goal is not to get Nobel Peace Prize, my goal is to get peace and my goal is to see the education of every child," she said. Malala now lives in the UK with her family but told of her plans to return to Pakistan when she had received a full education and was "fully empowered". I find one of those well-wishers in her own street in Swat, just outside the home that she never made it back to, on the afternoon she was shot.
– It's been a year since Malala Yousufzai was shot by Pakistani Taliban—and new threats aren't stopping the 16-year-old in her fight for girls' education. Traveling to her native Swat Valley, the BBC offers a new window into Malala's background and life story. The region launched boys' schools in 1922, and within a few years it offered girls' schools as well. Standing out from its neighbors, "Swat was proud of its record on education," says the grandson of former leaders. But in 2008, the Taliban demanded that girls' schools shut down—or face danger. Despite the threat, Malala blogged and made public appearances to describe her educational experience. "I didn't want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children," she tells the BBC, which gives a detailed account of the shooting and the risky surgery afterward. Now attending school in England, Malala continues to face danger from the Taliban. "She accepted that she attacked Islam, so we tried to kill her, and if we get another chance we will definitely kill her and that will make us feel proud," says a spokesman, per Sky News. But there are bright spots on the horizon, the AP notes: Malala has been invited to a reception with Queen Elizabeth, and she's a Nobel Peace Prize contender.