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A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini
Novel, 2007
Two women's lives in Herat and Kabul across Soviet occupation, civil war and Taliban rule, showing domestic life under each regime.
Books set in Afghanistan
Eight books by writers from Afghanistan, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner.
About the literature of Afghanistan
Afghan literature runs from the seventeenth-century Pashto poet Khushal Khan Khattak, often called the national poet, to Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. Writers use Dari, the Afghan form of Persian, and Pashto, and Pashto oral poetry includes the landay, a two-line folk poem. Since the Soviet invasion of 1979, war has driven many writers into exile.
The Kite Runner begins with a Kabul childhood, with Pashtun and Hazara divisions at its heart. Atiq Rahimi's Earth and Ashes sends an old man to a coal mine during the Soviet occupation to tell his son of the family's death in a bombing. Homeira Qaderi's Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother's Letter to Her Son is a memoir of growing up in Herat under the Taliban.
By writers from Afghanistan
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The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
Novel, 2003
Pre-war Kabul childhood, the Soviet invasion and Taliban-era return, with Pashtun and Hazara divisions at the heart of the story.
The Patience Stone
Atiq Rahimi
Novel, 2008. Translated from French by Polly McLean
A woman speaks to her comatose husband in a war-torn Afghan city, exposing marriage, honour and female silence.
Earth and Ashes
Atiq Rahimi
Novel, 2000. Translated from Persian by Erdağ M. Göknar
An old man travels to a coal mine in the Soviet-occupation era to tell his son of the family's death from bombing.
The Pearl That Broke Its Shell
Nadia Hashimi
Novel, 2014
Kabul and Helmand, contrasting the bacha posh tradition of girls raised as boys across a century of women's lives.
Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother's Letter to Her Son
Homeira Qaderi
Memoir, 2020. Translated from Persian by Zaman S. Stanizai
A memoir of growing up in Herat under the Taliban, and of motherhood, education and women's resistance.
My Life with the Taliban
Abdul Salam Zaeef
Memoir, 2010. Translated from Pashto by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn
A Taliban founder's memoir of Kandahar, the anti-Soviet jihad, the movement's rise and his Guantanamo detention.
A Woman Among Warlords
Malalai Joya
Memoir, 2009
An activist's account of Farah province, refugee life and confronting warlords in the post-2001 Afghan parliament.
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