The sewing circles of Herat : my Afghan years

A gold-inscribed invitation to a wedding in Pakistan led Christina Lamb to leave suburban England for Peshawar - a town perched on the frontier of the Afghan war - at the age of just 21.

Captivated by the Afghans she met, for two years she tracked the final stages of the mujaheddin victory over the Soviets as Afghan friends smuggled her in and out of their country in a variety of guises - from burqa-clad wife to Kandahari boy - travelling by foot, on donkeys, or hidden under the floor of an ambulance.

Long haunted by her experiences in Afghanistan, Lamb returned there after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre to find out what had become of the people and places that had marked her life as a young graduate.

This time seeing the land through the eyes of a mother and experienced foreign correspondent, Lamb's journey brings her in touch with the people no one else is writing about: the abandoned victims of almost a quarter century of war. Among them are the brave women writers of Herat who carried on the literary tradition of this ancient Persian city under the guise of sewing circles; those persecuted by the Taliban such as Kabul's leading kite-maker, imprisoned for making the colourful paper kites that fly from the rooftops of the city; and Khalil Ahmed Hassani, a former Taliban torturer who admits to breaking the spines of men, then making them stand on their heads.

This text is a poignant memoir of her love affair with the country and its people.