The most recommended books about Kabul

Aram’s book plunged me into a surreal landscape that felt weirdly normal—a quality familiar to me from dreams.

It’s set in a neighborhood of Kabul, Afghanistan, during the civil war of the mid-90s, but this isn’t like any war I’ve seen depicted: there are no armies with clashing interests.

No one knows who’s fighting or why. This war isn’t about anything, it’s just there, meaningless and ubiquitous, like rush hour traffic or pollution, something to get through as you go about your everyday life, be it collecting scorpions, having sex with the neighbor’s wife, creating beauty with calligraphy, whatever… Often I found myself shedding tears without knowing why. I wasn’t in Kabul during that war, but after this novel, I felt like I had been.

As I have discovered throughout my career, there are very few women who write about coffee and the coffee industry in general, and so I want to champion this one. Coffee itself is not the main focus of this delightful book, but the cafe—and its owners, staff, and customers—really take centre stage. Rodriguez’s descriptions of the little haven created by a simple coffee shop in Afghanistan’s war-torn capital are beautiful and captivating as well as a reminder of why spaces like this are so culturally important. This is a cosy book to curl up with and absorb the heroines’ adventures, secrets, and unusual friendships made along the way.  

In January 2002, less than four months after 9/11 and three since the US invasion of Afghanistan, Rory Stewart set out to walk from Herat to Kabul. In the preface, he states, "I’m not good at explaining why," and he never really answers that question – but the book that resulted from that decision has become a classic in the author’s lifetime. I’m lucky enough to own a rare first edition – rare because it was produced inexpensively and in small numbers by Picador, who clearly expected it to attract little attention. They were wrong: it became an international best-seller and multi-award winner – deservedly so. As well as being packed with detail about the war-torn land through which he travelled and the people he met en route, it is also a deeply spiritual account – moving, troubling, and uplifting in equal measure. 

An extraordinary book by an extraordinary woman. Saira Shah recounts her journeys in Pakistan and Afghanistan, in the context of her upbringing in a family with deep roots in the region. She is on the ground during the rise of the Taliban and the fight against the Russian occupation, and the story is hair-raising, enlightening, revelatory, informed, and insightfully detailed. Ms. Shah went on to make the celebrated documentary Beneath the Veil, risking her life daily to shoot video during the first phase of Taliban control. Unforgettable, and indispensable for understanding Afghanistan.

When bombs fall on Nadia’s home, she’s separated from her family in the middle of a war. Over the course of a few short, dangerous days, she has to find a way through her destroyed city to her parents. With startling detail, N.H. Senzai captures the frenzy and peril of Nadia’s situation. 

N.H. Senzai also writes wonderful books about Afghan refugees, like Shooting Kabul, but I personally found Escape from Aleppo her best work so far. I read it all in a gulp, and came out with a deeper understanding of what even a tiny slice of the refugee experience can look like.

It seems as if I’m consistently selecting novels set during war. But my former recommendation, and this one, is just too good to pass by plus it’s on the top shelf of my library, keeping other favorites company. This one is a love story between boyhood friends and I’m a hopeless romantic. Match my romantic soul with tragedy and I’m a goner. Now we’re in Afghanistan where a privileged young boy and his friend, the son of his father’s servant, live through their country’s revolution and are invaded by Russian forces that tear the country apart. The writing is so powerful and eloquent, the subject so timely (it was published in 2003), that I was spellbound by Khaled Hosseini’s literary genius.

The widows of Kabul called my wife “Frishta” (Angel). Janna loved working with them and she loves this book. Åsne Seierstad writes about the experiences of Afghan women and their prospects, marriages, hopes, and fears. Seierstad lived with a family dominated by a patriarch who loved books; for which the Taliban, also had a—literally—burning passion.

Ann Jones’ memoir Kabul in Winter takes the reader inside the lives of Afghan women following the overthrow of the Taliban in the early 2000s. The book includes the necessary tour of Afghanistan’s history taking the reader through major events alongside the more valuable contribution of her time in Kabul. The book’s beauty lies in Jones’ ability to explain the plight of Afghan women in the complex context of entrenched cultural norms and religious beliefs without relying on simplistic Western cliches. We get to understand that there is no easy solution, no quick fix, because the entire society is structured around an uber patriarchy. I loved how her writing didn’t hold back and how her passion shines through along with her anger and despair.

Until read this book, I took it as a given that countries had a right to request the return of antiquities that ended up in (mostly) Western museums, narratives that are now making headlines in our anti-colonial present.

Cuno explains how complex this issue is ethically, legally and philosophically. Many of the peoples whose heritage these objects represent have disappeared or no longer occupy the countries in question.

Also for the sake of the objects themselves should they be studied and maintained and made available to a wide public in a museum rather than be returned to a corrupt government?

From our comfortable perch in North America, it’s almost impossible to imagine how children—girls, especially—survive in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The Breadwinner made it real to me, with all the oppression that the main character, eleven-year-old Parvana, experiences and all the courage she demonstrates. This book showed me the common humanity we share with people whose lives are so different from our own. And it forced me to ask myself: Could I have been as brave and resourceful as Parvana?

The Library Bus offers a glimpse into the importance of mobile libraries, showing how one bus run by a mother and daughter delivers books, school supplies, and lessons to other young girls in Afghanistan. Told of the course of one day, with the bus leaving Kabul in the very early morning and ending at bedtime, the story explains the restrictions women and girls faced under Taliban rule in a clear and age-appropriate way.