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
In this episode, Sophy and Taran discuss her book, Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul, and the author’s extended visits to Afghanistan’s capital city over a span of seven years.
They talk about how empathy and imagination enrich the physical reality of place and time. She describes the power of interior worlds, and her experience as a woman growing up in India, travelling in books before she got to see the world. They consider how the act of walking loosens the paths of memory.
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 a complex narrative into a single story.
'When we talk about the voicelessness of Afghans,’ says Taran, ‘it's a failure of listening, not a failure of speaking out.’
Taran’s award-winning 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
Mark Eisner (ed.)
- The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems
Georgette Heyer
- An Infamous Army
P.G. Wodehouse
- The Best of Wodehouse: An Anthology
You can order these books from John Sandoe Books here.
