Two Afternoons in Kabul Stadium is an exciting history of life in the second half of the twentieth century in Afghanistan. This book offers not just a new way of seeing Afghanistan but also a new way of understanding it.

For its first thirty-five years, Kabul stadium was closed to Afghan women. That changed one afternoon in August 1959 when women from the country’s ruling elite appeared unveiled in western dress at a celebration of Afghanistan’s independence, having discarded their customary chadaris. This dramatic change in where and how women were seen was recognised almost immediately as a turning point, not only for women in Afghanistan’s cities but for the country itself, symbolising its embrace of the modern. But the Kabul stadium is now remembered very differently, as the Taliban’s prime place of public execution.

Bonyhady explores life in modern Afghanistan using dress, traditional crafts and images as a lens through which to examine this extraordinary country and the extraordinary changes it has undergone in the last six decades.