Women in Translation Book Club: My Dear Kabul

Please note this meeting will be in person at the bookshop. There will be a mixture of in-person and online meetings throughout the year.

The Women In Translation reading group provides a free, friendly and gentle environment in which opinions are shared and new appreciations can be discovered. A place for curious minds and relaxed conversation hosted by poet and translator Annie Rutherford.

For December 2025 the book will meet in person to discuss My Dear Kabul: A year in the life of an Afghan women’s writing group, by various authors, translated by Parwana Fayyaz and Negeen Kargar.

Please support the bookshop & the book club by ordering your books through Lighthouse, Use the code LONG-VICTORIOUS-WIT for bookclubbers 10% off.

The Book:

In August 2021, as the Taliban approached the gates of Kabul, twenty-one women writers in Afghanistan messaged their WhatsApp group chat: they asked what news other had heard and if everyone was safe. These women had been brought together as a writing group and were about to publish their first collection of short stories. Some were students, some newly married, one was a grandmother; all were afraid of what was now to come.

Over the next year, in their makeshift online refuge, they shared the day-to-day reality of life after the Taliban retook Afghanistan. This is their collective diary, forming a powerful chorus of resistance and solidarity.

'Fascinatingly detailed and fiercely brave' GUARDIAN

'Its courage is momentous' ALI SMITH