Three Women of Herat : Afghanistan 1973-77

In 1973, when Afghanistan still had a King ruling from his palace in Kabul with his own court musicians, Veronica Doubleday set up home in Herat, a proud Afghan city near the Persian frontier, cognisant of its glorious history as capital of a once vast Central Asian Empire. She was not a casual traveler but a young musician married to a scholar, determined to break out of the charmed circle of expatriate academic life and make real friendships with local women.

The tentative story of these very different friendships takes the reader into a rare, deep, and privileged insight into the hidden world of Afghan female society. This alone would make the book remarkable, but it has an extraordinary afterlife of its own. A Communist coup, the Russian invasion, a long guerrilla war of Resistance, Civil War and the rise of the Taliban separated Veronica from her friends. She feared the worst and sought to assist them, but was also aware that contact from a Westerner could prove lethal. Then a fragile peace allowed her to meet them again and pick up their stories.

An exceptional work that reads like a novel, Three Women of Herat offers a sensitive, knowledgeable and deeply moving portrait of an annihilated civilization, with an illuminating understanding of purdah and a ravishing eye for the rituals of day-to-day life.