The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan

Award-winning journalist Christina Lamb chronicles the human stories behind the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Lamb spent the last phase of the Soviet War in Pakistan, relying on her friendship with exiled Afghans to smuggle her in and out of Jalalabad. Many of these friends are now the Taliban, giving her exclusive and critical insight into the brutalization of this tragic, war-ravaged land.

Her own professional history equips Lamb to discover the people no one else is writing about: the battered and abandoned victims of a quarter century of war. These include people like Khalil Ahmed Hassan, a former Taliban torturer who admits to inflicting horrific beatings, and to breaking the spines of men, then making them stand on their heads. A business graduate with no strong religious convictions, Hassan joined the Taliban on hearing that his 85-year-old grandfather had been captured and would only be released if a male relative joined the Taliban. Lamb also tells the story of Afghan women who would covertly continue academic lessons at a great risk to themselves and their families.