A correspondence is a leap of faith. You entrust your words to someone you have never met.
At Villa 102 in Frankfurt, on the opening day of the Book Fair, a writer from the Paranda Network and a Swiss novelist met in person for the first time after months of letters, and read them aloud in Persian-Dari and German. The project behind the evening has been running for five years.
The Letter Exchange pairs Afghan women writers from the Paranda Network — the network of Afghan women writers convened by Untold Narratives, a HAMRAH Network member — with established German- and English-language authors. Letters pass in Persian-Dari and German, between writers in exile and writers still inside Afghanistan, over months. It is a collaboration between Untold Narratives, Weiter Schreiben and KfW Stiftung, now in its fifth year, which means it has run continuously across the period that dismantled Afghan women’s public life.
Last week, the project brought one of those correspondences into a room.
The meeting
Tamanna Easar, a Paranda Network writer, and Swiss author Yael Inokai had written to each other across four letters between June and December 2025. They had never met. At Villa 102 they sat side by side on stage for the first time and gave a live bilingual reading — Easar in Persian-Dari, Inokai in German. Something that would usually remain private became shared.
The evening opened with remarks from the project’s leadership: Lucy Hannah, director of Untold Narratives; Annika Reich, director of Weiter Schreiben; and Daniela Leykam, project manager at KfW Stiftung, who set out the history of the collaboration. Vivian Perkovic moderated a conversation on literature, Afghan women, and the narratives that get pushed to the margin, with music from Elshan Ghasimi. The evening closed with a book signing by Germany-based Paranda authors Fatima Khawary Kimya, Nooria Fakhri, Naeema Ghani and Marie Bamyani.
What is in the letters
Easar’s first letter, Getrocknete Träne — Dried Tear — was written in June 2025 and translated from Persian by Bianca Gackstatter. It begins with an airline refusing to accept her visa, leaving her unable to reach her parents, and moves into what exile does to feeling itself.
“Es ist, als hätte ich im Exil bei all der unfreiwilligen Akzeptanz das Weinen verlernt.” In exile, amid all this involuntary acceptance, it is as though I have forgotten how to cry. She names the acceptance for what it is: “Eine schmerzhafte und unfreiwillige Akzeptanz” — a painful and involuntary acceptance.
She writes about a pomegranate tree in Parwan as the image of home, then learns of a girl who died escaping a forced marriage, and the image will not hold its earlier meaning. And: “Ich habe die Frauen Afghanistans gesehen und sehe sie immer noch” — I have seen the women of Afghanistan, and I see them still. Eight days later she has reached her parents after all, and ends on the judgement that the world is ugly and still beautiful.
The exchange goes on from there. Her third letter is titled Führe ein mutiges Leben und hab keine Angst vor Schwierigkeiten — live a courageous life and do not fear hardship. Inokai’s reply, the fourth, is called Die ungelebten Leben unserer Mütter und Großmütter, die in uns weiterleben — the unlived lives of our mothers and grandmothers, which live on in us. Two writers, in two languages, arriving at the same inheritance from opposite directions.
Why it matters
Afghan women’s writing is too often received as testimony — evidence of a situation — rather than as literature with its own concerns, craft and arguments. Easar’s letters refuse that reduction.
Letters between peers assume mutual interest and mutual authority. Inokai is not interviewing Easar. They are writing to each other, and both are changed by it. That is the argument the project makes simply by existing, and it is why the organisers chose a bilingual reading as the form for the evening: neither language subordinated, neither writer explaining herself to the other’s audience.
Writing can be an anchor and a source of hope — a place where grief and despair are allowed to find a voice. For Afghan women writing under these conditions, it is also a record.
Afghan women’s writing needs publishers and translators, not only platforms. Funding translation, editorial support and publication is what turns an exchange into a body of work that outlasts the funding cycle. Untold Narratives was established to do exactly that work, and HAMRAH will continue to support it.
Cultural and literary programming should be treated as part of the Afghanistan protection and accountability picture, not as an optional extra to it. What Afghan women writers are building is a record — alongside our media members, Zan Times and Nimrokh.
Read the Easar–Inokai letters: weiterschreiben.jetzt/weiter-schreiben-afghanistan-briefe/yael-inokai-tamanna-easar/
Paranda Network: untold-narratives.org
