Secret Afghan Women’s Book Club Defies Taliban Ban

Four young women sit together, waiting for a phone to ring. When it does, they lean in to catch their friend’s crackling voice. It’s time for their weekly book club — a clandestine gathering that defies the Taliban’s sweeping ban on girls’ education.

Every Thursday, the five friends meet in secret to discuss novels by Abbas Maroufi, Zoya Pirzad and Ernest Hemingway. They call themselves “women with books and imagination.” In a country where girls are barred from school beyond grade six and universities remain closed to women, reading together has become both refuge and rebellion.

Reading as Resistance

One member, 21-year-old Parwana, joins by phone from another district. She was still a child when the Taliban pulled girls out of classrooms. “When they banned us from attending school, I lost all hope,” she says. Now her week revolves around the pages she reads and the conversations that follow.

This week’s pick is The Year of Turmoil by Iranian writer Abbas Maroufi. The novel follows Noushafarin, a young woman trapped in an oppressive marriage in mid-20th-century Iran. Its themes — repression, faith, patriarchal power — feel painfully current. “From the very beginning, I identified with her; it was painful, very painful,” Parwana says.

The chill in the room seeps through their layers as steam rises from cups of green tea. Outside, the risk is real. Taliban authorities have tightened ideological censorship, confiscating books deemed out of line with their interpretation of Sharia and conducting searches for banned titles, as reported by University World News. Around 140 books authored by women have been banned in recent crackdowns.

A Global Fight Over Books

Secret reading circles have quietly spread across Afghanistan since 2021, with members often vetting newcomers through encrypted apps and steering clear of overt political debate. An investigation by El País documented similar groups meeting in the shadows of Kabul, determined to keep literature alive.

The stakes echo far beyond Afghanistan. Around the world, battles over what people are allowed to read are intensifying, from sweeping state legislation to grassroots challenges in schools. We’ve seen how students are pushing back against rising school book bans and how PEN America warns book bans are costing authors and communities. In Afghanistan, the consequences are even harsher — detention, violence, the erasure of an entire generation’s education.

Yet every Thursday, five women still gather around a phone and a stack of novels. They read Orwell and Hemingway not for escapism, but to understand their world. In a place where classrooms have gone dark, a book club has become a quiet, radical act of hope.