The Sewing Circles of Herat, 2002

Cover of Christina's Lamb's 'The Sewing Circles of Herat' (2002). Cover of Christina's Lamb's 'The Sewing Circles of Herat' (2002).

The Sewing Circles of Herat: a Memoir of Afghanistan is a non-fiction book published by award-winning British journalist, Christina Lamb (1966) in 2002. The book is about a group of Afghan women living in Herat, who meet together in secret to discuss books and literary criticism under the guise of learning to sew, while the city was controlled by the fundamentalist Taliban (1995-2001).

In the late 1980's, Lamb began reporting, from Peshawar (Pakistan) and inside Afghanistan, on the Afghan mujahedin fighting against the Soviet invasion. She returned to Afghanistan in 2001, just after the Taliban was driven out of Herat. 

In Herat, an ancient centre of learning and culture in Afghanistan, she interviewed members of the Golden Needle Ladies Sewing Classes about their lives and work. For five years, the Golden Needle classes would meet three times a week, despite the rule of the Taliban. These women risked their lives in order to to attend lectures on literature and continue their education. Inspired by the Golden Needle, hundreds of such 'sewing circles' were established in Herat and surrounding areas, which led to an estimated 29,000 women and girls continuing their education, despite the Taliban’s ban on female schooling.

Source: LAMB, Christina (2002). The Sewing Circles of Herat: a Memoir of Afghanistan, London: HarperCollins Publishers.

Digital source (retrieved 4th April 2016).

SA

Last modified on Monday, 26 June 2017 17:04
Published in Non-fictional works
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