Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA was established during the civil war in Tajikistan 17 years ago. It started up its Publishing Unit in 2003 by publishing its first book “One Thousand and one Poems for Afghanistan”. In the same year, it published “Caravan of Poetry for Peace and Democracy in Afghanistan”, “Caravan of Light (for young readership)” and “Caravan of Poetry for Peace” in Tajikistan (in Cyrillic script). With the onset of Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA’s activities in Afghanistan, its book publishing took a more serious turn.
At the beginning, Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA mainly published pamphlets containing the texts and speeches presented at the public-debate Goftegu meetings that it initiated. “In praise of Ahmad Shamlou, Living Conscience of International Poetry” was the first pamphlet to appear in this series. Subsequently, other pamphlets were published on citizenship, social justice in Islam, seeking truth and the quest for justice, freedom of expression, democracy, civil society and international experience, cultural invasion, universities in Afghanistan and the capacity to produce elite, globalisation, feminism and other topics.
In the period that followed in 2009, the Publishing Unit adopted a new approach to publish more serious books on human rights, arts and literature, transitional justice, women, and children and young people. These books were classified in several series: “Let’s break the silence”, “Women”, “Simorgh” “Goftegu”, “Children & Young People”, and “Politis asia”. The Publishing Unit has published books by such authors as Edward Said, Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Hans Christian Andersen, Hanna Arendt, George Orwell, Ray Douglas Bradbury, Albert Camus and others.
Let’s break the silence
Books in this series concern justice and human rights. Here are some of the titles: “Afghanistan: In Search of Truth and Justice”, “Against Oblivion, Experience of Truth and Justice Commissions”, “The Past Enlightens the Future (a collection of interviews with victims and political personalities)”, For recording in history (narratives of victims of one decade), “Representations of the Intellectual”, “Totalitarianism”, and “Atlas of Human Rights”.
Women
Titles concerning women and gender are published in this series. Whereas very few related titles have been published in Afghanistan before, Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA has concentrated more on this series in order to provide the basic topics to the interested readers and to develop a source for universities planning to establish Women’s Studies courses. Titles in this series include, among others: “The Second Sex”, “Sous les sciences sociales, le genre,” “Topics in Feminist Theory”, “Dictionnaire critique du féminisme,” “Gender and Nation”, “Social Movements of Women”, “The status of Family and Women: According to the Shari’a Law and Customary Practices in Afghanistan”, “Family and Law: prospects of reforming the family law in Afghanistan”, “A Room of One’s Own”.
Simorgh
This series concerns arts and literature titles, because there is a solid relationship between positive social changes and strengthening the foundations of justice and human rights on the one hand and arts and literature on the other. Therefore, Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA has published many books by writers and poets from Afghanistan and other countries. These include: “the Plague”, “Cacau”, “1984”, “Animal Farm”, “Fahrenheit 451”, “The end of the three invulnerables”, “There is a sad child in my dreams”, “Flames of Love”, “Up and Down”, “Nowruznameh”.
Goftegu: dialogue
Some of the books published by Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA are concerned with public-debate meetings, 146 of which have been organised since 2006 in Kabul, Herat, Balkh and Badakhshan. These titles contain the presentations in those meetings.
Children and young people
Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA has also paid much attention to the generation that will be running the world in the future. Very few books have been published for children and young people in Afghanistan. Therefore Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA has decided to publish some titles in this series. They include: “The Little Prince”, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights for Children and Adolescents”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, and “Stories from the Book of Kings” in nine volumes.
Politis asia
A number of Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA titles have been published in this series. These titles have a uniform cover design and they mostly contain articles translated from other languages into Persian. Some of these titles include: “Violations of Human Rights and US Policy”, “NATO, Exceptions to Democracy and Decline of Empires”, “Discrimination and Political Participation of Women: Role of Education”, “Universal Jurisdiction, mechanisms to prosecute human rights violators”, ”A Handbook of Transitional Justice, A to Z”, “Federalism and democracy”, “EU guidelines-Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law”.
Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA has produced a total print-run of 200,000 copies in the span of 11 years, which have been distributed gratis to students, cultural and civil activists. A number of these books are available in PDF format here.
