The Sewing Circles of Herat
A Memoir of Afghanistan



Harper Collins
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Reviews
“Deeply penetrating, informative and always engaging piece of modern journalism. Through the dispiriting events under which Afghanistan continues to be submerged, Lamb continually finds delightful people who have latched on to the fact that Faith is an ecclesiastical word for credulity, and offer some hope for the country’s future”
Cal McCrystal, Financial Times

“This is a lucid, informative, haunting book, passionate yet never self-indulgent, which sings the story of Lamb’s love and the tragic plight of a defiant and divided nation.”
The Sunday Times

“Immersed in Afghan culture, politics and society, Lamb manages to love Afghanistan without romanticising it and displays a profound empathy for its people which never descends into sentimentality”.
Sun-Herald (Australia)

“A compelling page-turner […] Award-winning foreign correspondent Christina Lamb has written an inspiring and moving account of Afghanistan’s plight […] Lamb shows that, despite attempts to destroy the country and its culture, its soul remains uncrushed.”
Marianne Brace, Independent on Sunday

“As an account of how Afghanistan got into its present state and of the making if the grotesque regime of the Taliban it could not possibly be bettered. Brilliant in its human detail.”
Spectator

“An enthralling tale of terror and absurdity underpinned by one constant – an obvious affection for the people and country of Afghanistan”
Time Out

“Lamb has a curiosity that demands she listen to anyone – warlord, reluctant torturer, Pakistani intelligence officer, family of the last man hanged […] And beyond the door of the ‘Golden Needle Ladies’ Sewing Classes’ in Heart, Lamb is awed by that cultured city’s resistance […] which, as [she] understands, matters more than pages of guns and rubble.”
Veronica Howell, Guardian

“Excellent […] A remarkable blend of outrage, compassion and hope, Christina Lamb’s book is an alternately horrifying and uplifting insight into the Taliban regime.”
Justin Marozzi, Books of the Year, Evening Standard

“This book is in the best tradition of classics by British adventurers such as Robert Byron, Peter Levi and Eric Newby. In fact, Lamb’s empathy for the people she meets is such that her writing outdoes that of her stuffier male forebears. For Lamb, the country is more than just magnificent landscape and proud history. She has a long perspective from which to observe what she sees, having made a trip into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan at the end of the 1980s with a young Hamid Karzai, now the country’s dapper president […] Her book boasts genuine journalistic exposés as well: she tracks down a Taliban torturer and discovers the Heart literary classes which, masquerading as sewing circles, concealed their activities from the religious police. After receiving a series of heartfelt letters about life in Kabul under the Taliban, she hunts for the young woman who wrote them.”
Marcus Warren, The Daily Telegraph

“An engaging, macabre, shocking and deeply moving book, written by a journalist who travels with her eyes and her heart wide open. With this book she has joined the company of her own countries long line of remarkable travel writers.”
Russell Martin for Barnes and Noble USA

“Quite tantalising. How did [Lamb] get to know all those important people? I got more and more interested in her and her own story throughout the book.”
Tracy Chevalier, A Good Read, BBC Radio 4

“Lamb writes with pace, conviction and honesty, uncovering both the terrible human cost of the Taliban experiment and the enduring strength of spirit of those who refused to join it.”
The Sunday Telegraph

“Christina Lamb is the best kind of journalist. With her doggedness, her vast connections and her considerable bravery, her reportorial abilities are impressive”
Beverly Donofrio, Barnes and Noble

“[Lamb ] has the great gift of a good journalist; the eye for detail as well as the broader picture […] Enormously intrepid – through charm and genuine love of the people and country, she gets people to do things for her that they wouldn’t do for male journalists”
Christopher Cook, A Good Read, BBC Radio 4

“A passionate chronicle of her love affair with Afghanistan”
Rory Maclean, The Sunday Times

“This is a book in the great tradition of indomitable women travellers and christina is wonderfully good at doing that. She gets to places you can’t believe she got to and she has a great gift of eye for detail...your flesh really does begin to creep”
Christopher Cook broadcaster and artistic director of Cheltenham Literary Festival, on Radio 4

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