Sameer Gudhate Presents the Book Review of Escape from Kabul by Dr. Enakshi Sengupta
- Sameer Gudhate
- 9 minutes ago
- 4 min read
I didn’t mean to start this book on a weekday night. I really didn’t. I had promised myself an early sleep, a calm mind, maybe even some music. But books have a strange way of choosing their own timing, don’t they? Escape from Kabul by Dr. Enakshi Sengupta didn’t knock politely — it slipped into my hands like a pulse waiting to be heard. And somewhere between opening the first page and taking the first sip of my green tea, the world around me went quiet. By page three, the tea had gone cold, and Kabul had come alive — fierce, trembling, and heartbreakingly real.
Enakshi Sengupta, whom many know from her earlier work The Silk Route Spy, writes with a scholar’s sharp eye and a storyteller’s soft heartbeat. It’s a rare combination. She doesn’t just narrate events; she invites you to sit beside her as she revisits them. And Escape from Kabul isn’t a book in the traditional sense — it feels more like unspooling someone's breathless memory, the kind that still shakes when spoken aloud.
The premise alone is enough to punch the air out of your lungs. August 2021. The Taliban reclaim Afghanistan. Five women — Nadia, Anjali, Zohra, Cathy, and Fawzia — find themselves trapped in a city that suddenly turns into a minefield of fear. These are not nameless faces on nightly news. They are educators. Dreamers. Builders of futures. Women who once walked freely on the AAU campus are now calculating which street corner might hide a man with a gun. Their identities, which once invited respect, now paint targets on their backs. You feel the tension knot your chest as phones buzz with warnings and the sound of footsteps outside a door becomes a question: friend or fate?
What struck me, almost immediately, was how Sengupta handles this terrifying landscape. She could’ve written a Hollywood thriller — after all, the material is all there: forged papers, midnight escapes, dangerous crossings. But she chooses elegance over adrenaline. Her restraint becomes her power. The prose is clean, sharp, deliberate. There are no theatrics, only truth — and truth is more dramatic than any fiction could ever be. She writes like someone who has tasted fear and refuses to sensationalize it.
And then there are the women. God, the women. Each one carries a world of pain — the kind that doesn’t scream but sits silently in the corner of a room and changes the air. One loses her husband, another her leg, another her dignity, another her dreams that took years to build. Some were betrayed by the men they loved, some were used, some reduced to shadows. And yet, not a single one breaks. They bend, yes, but they refuse to shatter. The sisterhood that forms between them is the kind of bond we read about rarely — quiet, instinctive, forged in the fire of shared fear.
There is one image that continues to linger with me: Anjali looking out at the city lights, flickering like dying candles, and wondering if the world would ever understand what it means to lose freedom overnight. That line didn’t just sit on the page — it crawled under my skin. Because freedom is one of those things we don’t notice when we have it, but the moment it is threatened, it becomes the very air we breathe.
The pacing of the book mirrors the chaos it describes — fast, tense, breathless. There are moments where it slows, almost too much, especially when the women reflect deeply on their pasts. But perhaps that pause is necessary. Perhaps we are meant to sit with their sorrow, instead of rushing past it. Escape, after all, isn’t a sprint. Sometimes it’s the slow, painful walk out of fear.
Reading this book felt like standing at the fault line where history meets humanity. It reminded me that the distance between our ordinary lives and someone else’s nightmare is often just a shift in geography or power. I found myself closing the book more than once just to breathe — not because the writing was heavy, but because the truth was.
What I admire most is how Sengupta writes with both steel and softness. She doesn’t let you look away from horror, but she also doesn’t let you forget that kindness survives even in collapsing cities. Men like Jalaluddin and Ayoub appear briefly but meaningfully — reminders that even in the darkest streets, someone carries a candle.
This book stayed with me long after I turned the last page. I felt gratitude. I felt anger. I felt awe. But mostly, I felt humbled by the courage of women who refused to let the world decide their fate.
If you want a book that doesn’t just inform but transforms — one that makes you feel the dust, the dread, the hope — Escape from Kabul is waiting for you. Let it into your hands. Let it unsettle you. Let it remind you of the fragility and fire of freedom.
Some stories aren’t just meant to be read.
They’re meant to be remembered.
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