Series 2: Episode Three
Taran Khan
The idea of a foreign woman walking alone in Afghanistan might seem a world away from current events — but it's what makes Khan's book, Shadow City, urgent reading. Sophy and Taran meet up in Delhi's Aerocity to talk about breaking stereotypes.
Released 17.02.23
The Conversation
Taran Khan is an author and journalist. In this episode, Sophy and Taran discuss her book, Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul, about her extended visits to Afghanistan’s capital city, Kabul, over a span of seven years from 2006 to 2013. They talk about how empathy and imagination enrich the physical reality of place and time.
They discuss how the act of walking loosens the many paths of memory, and offers a more modern take on writing about conflict.
They finish with the Kabul of today: the shock takeover by the Taliban in 2021, the voices that are silenced and the history that’s erased — not just by the Afghan government, but by our attempts to simplify and digest the narrative. Sometimes, they agree, the listening is more important than the telling.
Taran’s book, Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul is published by Chatto & Windus.
Books discussed:
Taran Khan
— Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul
Gene H. Bell-Villada and Ignacio López-Calvo (ed.)
— The Oxford Handbook of Gabriel García Márquez
J.M. Coetzee
— Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship
René de Costa
— The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
Mark Eisner (ed.)
— The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems
Georgette Heyer
— An Infamous Army
Wallace Stevens
— Harmonium
P.G. Wodehouse
— The Best of Wodehouse: An Anthology
