HERAT, Afghanistan — In a city once hailed as Afghanistan’s cultural capital, the heartbeat of Herat’s literary scene has grown faint. Bookshops that once bustled with scholars, students and poetry lovers now sit in silence, their shelves lined not for browsers but for buyers who pay by the kilo—purchasing books not to read, but to turn into cardboard.
“I used to stock books with pride,” said Hamidullah (a pseudonym), a bookseller who has worked in Herat’s Gawdan Alley for more than two decades. “Now I sell them by weight to packaging factories. There are no readers anymore—only recyclers.”
A city of silence
The downturn is not simply economic. Many bookstore owners in Herat say their trade has been crippled as much by censorship as by poverty. Since returning to power nearly four years ago, the Taliban have imposed sweeping restrictions on the publication and sale of literature, banning hundreds of titles deemed contrary to their interpretation of Islam or Afghan social values.
By mid-2022, a Taliban-appointed commission had compiled a list of at least 400 banned books, allowing only 10 to remain in circulation for “research purposes.” That list was sent not only to bookstores but to educational institutions and universities. Publishers say the real number of prohibited titles is far higher.
“In the beginning, the Taliban simply warned us against selling ‘suspicious books,’ mostly those written about them,” said one bookseller who attended a post-takeover meeting at an intelligence office in Kabul. “They didn’t even know which titles they meant.”
In the years since, the campaign has grown more coordinated. Taliban inspectors have raided public libraries and bookshops in Herat and Kabul, seizing books in a wide array of genres—modern philosophy, women-centered novels, progressive religious works, and literature on social sciences. In March 2023, the Ministry of Information and Culture formally declared that only books aligned with “Islamic values and Afghan traditions” could be published or sold—a decree reissued earlier this year.
Empty shelves, fading words
Visual culture has also disappeared. Shop windows and walls once decorated with book jackets, author portraits and literary quotes are now bare. “I’ve removed every image,” said Hamidullah. “They said pictures are haram—even if it’s just a book cover.”
The silence inside these stores mirrors the broader withdrawal from public intellectual life. University student Sher Mohammad, once a devoted reader, now rarely visits bookstores. “I used to buy a new book every month,” he said. “Now it’s a choice between bread and books. And bread always wins.”
Shabnam, 17, a former high school student now barred from school under Taliban policy, said novels have become her only solace. “I read fiction so I don’t think about my old dreams,” she said.
UNICEF, in partnership with Islamic Development Bank and the Saudi Fund for Development, has begun a $2.75 million project to rebuild eight schools in Herat and Badghis provinces. The effort is expected to benefit some 4,000 children.
But such programs offer limited relief for Herat’s literary institutions, many of which are shutting their doors permanently. Books that once enriched minds now feed machines.
“We didn’t just sell books—we sold hope,” Hamidullah said, standing near a wall where a hand-painted motto still lingers: “A nation that does not read books is destined to repeat history.”
Now that wall is bare. And in Herat, a city that once wrote Afghanistan’s cultural story, fewer pages are left to turn.
