The Thorn of the Burqa

Name: The Thorn of the Burqa
ISBN: 9787108065384

原老未SDX Joint Publishing Company · ChinaJun 2025

4.0

Word count: 102K words
Chapters: 38
ISBN: 9787108065384

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Summary

The author lived, ate, and spent her days alongside six Afghan women: Kawali, a martial arts teacher in a small town near Herat whom Time named a woman changing Afghanistan; Regina, owner of an embroidery workshop employing 400 Kandahar women, many of them widows (her father, a former mayor of Kandahar, was killed by a suicide bomb in 2011); Diba, a journalist who eats organic food and in manner and bearing seems anything but Afghan; Lubaba, a lying girl with a congenital condition who paints with her mouth; Gulzan, a woman who runs a naan shop to help support her family and has raised two daughters who work in women's radio; and Rezai, born a refugee in Iran and now a student in the veterinary program at Herat University. Six women, from a sixteen-year-old disabled painter to a woman near fifty who bakes bread; six stories, from the daughter of a former Kandahar mayor to an ordinary university student; six perspectives, from love that cannot be spoken aloud to devoted maternal love. They were born in different provinces, come from different ethnic groups, do different work, and differ in color and temperament. Afghan women are like us: no more noble, no more lowly. The author does not presume the right to define who they are; she hopes only to present contemporary Afghan women's lives truthfully, from an equal footing, through what she heard and saw.

Editor's review

The book's greatest strength is its "equal footing." The author, Yuan Laowei, lived alongside six Afghan women, neither looking down on them nor sensationalizing them for curiosity's sake; she records their daily lives as a companion: a martial arts teacher, an embroidery workshop owner, a girl who paints with her mouth, a woman who runs a naan shop, a veterinary student... Six slices of life form a true group portrait of contemporary Afghan women. The book neither turns them into symbols awaiting rescue nor elevates them into legendary heroes; instead it presents their complex reality, where resilience, contradiction, limitation, and warmth coexist. For readers, this is a work of reportage that breaks down stereotypes, suitable for reading when following international or women's issues or nonfiction writing. The prose is plain and restrained, rich in detail; reading it brings both the clarity of distance and the warmth of empathy. Readers may wish to slow down and take each woman's story as an independent chapter, avoiding summarizing them within a single framework.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Nonfiction readers interested in the current social reality of Afghanistan and the Middle East
Readers interested in women's issues and cross-cultural observation
Readers who enjoy reportage and interview-based character writing
Students and professionals who want to break stereotypes and broaden their international perspective

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting sensational suffering narratives or sentimental stories
Readers who prefer plot-driven, fast-paced fiction
Researchers seeking a systematic academic theoretical framework

Reading tips

Read the table of contents first to understand the differences among the six women, then choose chapters by interest; there is no need to read straight through in order.
After finishing each woman's story, pause and consider whether your previous assumptions about Afghan women have been revised.
Use a map to look up places such as Herat and Kandahar, deepening your spatial understanding of the subjects' circumstances.
After finishing, try retelling one woman's daily life in your own words to check whether you still fall into labeled generalizations.

About the publisher

SDX Joint Publishing Company China · Founded in 1932

SDX Joint Publishing Company is a publisher known for its humanities and social science titles, covering classics, culture, history, social fiction and politics. Its catalogue of 826 books includes Chinese and foreign literary classics such as The Scholars, Camel Xiangzi and Selected Short Stories of Chekhov, scholarly works such as Studies of Chinese Cave Temples, A Study of the Tuoba History (Revised Edition) and The Nine-Rank System: A Prehistory of the Imperial Examination, and translations such as Red Star Over China and Notes from the House of the Dead. Its authors include renowned Chinese and foreign writers such as Wu Jingzi, Lao She, Su Bai and Chekhov, as well as scholars and translators such as Chen Xiaoming, Wang Benhua, Guo Changbao and Zhu Xiansheng. Its publishing character lies in balancing the popularisation of classics with academic depth, with attention to textual quality and the transmission of knowledge.

版权信息
01 生于巴达赫尚：开馕铺的古尔赞婶婶
小有名气的馕
像花一样美好的生活
山区里的女性广播电台
02 生于坎大哈：商人瑞吉娜·哈米迪
艰难的决定
逃离
归来
数百人的祈祷
我的父亲古拉姆·哈米迪
我的女儿萨拉
03 生于喀布尔：记者迪巴
不婚主义者
一个洋葱扔过去
裁缝、布料和新裙子
一个人的野餐
三年前的初识
喀布尔女子监狱
二手名牌扫货记
04 生于赫拉特：武术老师卡瓦利
12英寸彩色电视里的武打世界
镇上第一个“吃螃蟹”的女孩
你来做武术老师怎么样？
和喀布尔同步的女子健身班
05 生于加兹尼：残疾画家鲁巴巴
成名
6：30到22：00
“I like it”（我喜欢它）
“不存在”的老师
06 生于伊朗：大学生热扎伊
初识
很多“现在”都是“过去”造成的
生日礼物
游行
吓瘫的兔子
后记
致谢

FAQ

Is this book academic research or reportage?

It is reportage: the author observed six Afghan women closely by living alongside them and recorded what she heard and saw. It is not an academic work and has no systematic theoretical framework; it is better read as character reportage.

What do the six women have in common?

They were born in different provinces, come from different ethnic groups, do different work, and range in age from sixteen to nearly fifty, so their identities differ greatly. What they share is being contemporary Afghan women, each coping with life in her own way; the book does not reduce them to a single image.

What attitude does the author take toward her subjects?

The author believes she has no right to define who they are and hopes to present them truthfully from an equal footing, neither elevating nor belittling them. The people in the book therefore have both resilient sides and contradictions and limitations; it reads not as heroic legend but as specific human beings.

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About the author

原老未 Author

Yuan Laowei is a writer about whom limited public information is available; the only confirmed work is the work of documentary literature The Thorn of the Burqa. Judging from the title and its common classification, the book falls within documentary or nonfiction literature and centers on the burqa, a garment with strong cultural and gendered significance, likely offering observation and record of the real circumstances of related regions or communities. Because basic details such as the author's nationality, dates of birth and death, and English name are not clearly recorded, personal experience and creative development cannot be described in detail, and this introduction can only offer a cautious account based on the work information available. In terms of style, the author appears inclined to address socially and culturally meaningful subjects through documentary writing, approaching real issues via concrete objects rather than fictional narrative. Such writing generally requires effort in gathering materials and on-site observation, as well as restraint and close attention to fact in narration. As the only currently traceable work by Yuan Laowei, The Thorn of the Burqa is the main basis for understanding the author's writing orientation, and readers may use it to consider how cultural symbols and lived experience are handled.