'A real-time, moving and intimate portrait of a year living under the Taliban, communicated via clandestine WhatsApp messages'

SERVICE95

'An intimate, courageous chronicle of life as it unfolds under Taliban rule'

OBSERVER, Book of the Day

'A hugely important book'

BERNARDINE EVARISTO

'A deeply moving collective memoir'

LYSE DOUCET

In August 2021, as the Taliban approached the gates of Kabul, twenty-one women writers in Afghanistan came online in their WhatsApp chat group: they asked what news others had heard and if everyone was safe.

These women had been brought together as a writing group. They were about to publish their first collection of short stories, while working regular day jobs. Some were students, some newly married, one was a grandmother: all were afraid of what was now to come. Over the next year, in the makeshift refuge of their WhatsApp group, they shared the day-to-day reality of life after a fall.

Publishing on the anniversary of the Fall of Kabul, this is the women's courageous collective diary: in it the writers watch cities transform, schools close, families change and freedoms disappear. They share stories of chaos, protest and flight - and of life continuing. Check-points are a daily trial; men start behaving differently. Children can't afford the ice-cream man's wares; passports are near impossible to obtain. Together, their messages form a powerful chorus of resistance and solidarity.

'Its courage is momentous'

ALI SMITH