Shadow City
A Woman Walks KabulSelect a format:
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Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
Winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award 2021
Winner of the Tata Literature Live First Book Award for Non-Fiction 2020
One of the first things I was told when I arrived in Kabul was never to walk...
When journalist Taran Khan arrives in Kabul, she uncovers a place that defies her expectations. Her wanderings with other Kabulis reveal a fragile city in a state of flux: stricken by near-constant war, but flickering with the promise of peace; governed by age-old codes but experimenting with new modes of living.
Her walks take her to the unvisited tombs of the dead, and to the land of the living - like the booksellers, archaeologists, film-makers and entrepreneurs who are remaking this 3,000-year-old city. And as NATO troops begin to withdraw from the country, Khan watches the cycle of transformation begin again.
'A fabulous piece of writing . . . I recommend it unreservedly' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
'A brilliant book' CHRISTINA LAMB, author of Farewell Kabul
'Powerfully evocative' Kapka Kassabova
'A wonderful journey' Atiq Rahimi
'Khan illuminates Kabul's life-affirming humanity' TLS
© Taran Khan 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
Winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award 2021
Winner of the Tata Literature Live First Book Award for Non-Fiction 2020
One of the first things I was told when I arrived in Kabul was never to walk...
When journalist Taran Khan arrives in Kabul, she uncovers a place that defies her expectations. Her wanderings with other Kabulis reveal a fragile city in a state of flux: stricken by near-constant war, but flickering with the promise of peace; governed by age-old codes but experimenting with new modes of living.
Her walks take her to the unvisited tombs of the dead, and to the land of the living - like the booksellers, archaeologists, film-makers and entrepreneurs who are remaking this 3,000-year-old city. And as NATO troops begin to withdraw from the country, Khan watches the cycle of transformation begin again.
'A fabulous piece of writing . . . I recommend it unreservedly' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
'A brilliant book' CHRISTINA LAMB, author of Farewell Kabul
'Powerfully evocative' Kapka Kassabova
'A wonderful journey' Atiq Rahimi
'Khan illuminates Kabul's life-affirming humanity' TLS
© Taran Khan 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
Reviews
Shadow City is no conventional travel book. For Khan gives us a Kabul of the imagination: it is the city that was, less the city that is, that fascinates her. Her perambulations represent a form of "bipedal archaeology", an exercise in exhuming the past and probing the lost... It is easy to cast Kabul as a tragic mess of a metropolis, but Khan illuminates its life-affirming humanity
Oliver Balch, Times Literary Supplement