A Burqa and a Hard Place: Three Years in the New Afghanistan (Sally Cooper, Macmillan, $32.95 tpb, ISBN 9781405038591, June) ***

Do we really need another reporter’s memoir about Afghanistan? Well, yes—if the book in question has something original to offer. ABC Radio journalist Sally Cooper went to Afghanistan not to report on the war, but to train the people of Afghanistan to produce their own radio journalism. She writes about teaching production skills and the basics of journalism (who, what, where, when, why), and things like how to interview a politician (interrupting with questions, rather than letting them speak for 20 minutes at a time). There are various colourful and/or telling vignettes about Afghanistan—the cleaner discovered dressing up in Cooper’s clothes, the men and boys who habitually throw stones at her when she walks down Kabul streets alone, US soldiers setting up a prostitute in Cooper’s hotel, the still-ubiquitous burqas (and what it feels like to wear one). This is a perfectly serviceable book about living and working in Afghanistan, and the media training angle gives it a new twist—but it’s not enough to make it stand out from the pack. Readers new to the topic will probably enjoy the book, but veterans will feel like they’ve heard it all before.

Jo Case is books editor of The Big Issue and newsletter editor at Readings

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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