Escape from Kabul by Enakshi Sengupta

In August 2021, as the world watched Kabul fall, five women found themselves trapped in a city spiralling into fear and uncertainty. Escape from Kabul by Enakshi Sengupta is an unflinching first-person account of survival, sisterhood and the will to endure when everything else collapses.

Written as a fast-paced story where the five friends go from the classrooms and homes on a college campus in Kabul to safe houses, convoys, and airport gates – all the while navigating curfews, gunfire, and shifting loyalties along the way. Told from a rare female perspective, Escape from Kabul is more than a chronicle of escape – it’s a testament to resilience. It offers readers a deeply personal lens into life under siege, where courage isn’t loud, but necessary.

Talking about the book, Enakshi Sengupta says, ‘Afghan women, like all other women, are beautiful, strong, courageous, and intelligent.  

You can cover them in a burqa, prevent them from going to schools, close one eye, and make them whisper and bar them from working. But you cannot break them or silence them forever.

My book Escape from Kabul is a tribute to these resilient women of Afghanistan. I shall wait to see them once again in their glory and with full freedom.’