The path to the Afghan production is by no means easy. Notwithstanding the fall of the Taliban, a woman appearing on stage in Afghanistan is still perceived by some to be little better than a prostitute. For over a generation men and women have not appeared on stage together and professional theatre barely exists.

A performance of Love's Labour's Lost, by William Shakespeare, in the Bagh-e Babur, Kabul, in a 2005 production by Rah-e Sabz. Photograph: AP Photo/Tomas Munita

Set up in 2005 by Corinne Jaber, Rah-e-Sabz is one of the only theatre groups in Afghanistan. So precarious is the current climate – the group was set to practice at the British Council in Kabul the same afternoon on which it was bombed – that the troupe are no longer able to rehearse in their homeland and so are bound for India before their UK performance at the Globe this May.

The fundraising launch for this theatrical endeavour was hosted by Simon Robey of the Royal Opera House at his home in Upper Wimpole Street. Impassioned talks were given by Rory Stewart MP and Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. Both commended the incredible zeal of Corinne and her co-producer Roger Granville and the important role of the company in reviving and fostering Afghanistan’s theatrical legacy.

The Comedy of Errors (Comedy-e Eshtebahat in Dari) will be staged at the Globe Theatre, London on 30-31st May 2012. Tickets can be bought direct from The Globe. This will be followed by performances at Hatfield House and the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. More information on those events will follow and you can expect to read more about the production in the pages of Steppe. Meanwhile, calling all polyglots with free time on their hands – if you fancy tackling all 37 plays and all 37 languages, including Troilus and Cressida in Maori, you can see the lot for £100, standing every time. Go on – you know you want to.

The launch for the book was held at 50 Albemarle Street, home to John Murray publishers for over 200 years, and in the very room where Burnes plotted his journeys into Central Asia. A small portrait of Burnes hanging there was used as a frontispiece for the first volume of his writings, but Burnes thought he looked like a carpet-seller, like a Bokharan, and in the second volume his moustache was turned down and his face became more serious.

The original portrait, below, is on the cover of the new edition.

Alexander Burnes by Daniel Maclise, 1834

And finally, we have Kathleen Hopkirk, wife of Peter Hopkirk (of Great Game fame), to thank for condensing Burnes’ three-volume work into a much-shorter, much-easier read than the original. Plus William Dalrymple for writing the introduction. The book will be reviewed in Steppe soon, but if like me, you can’t wait – you can buy it here: http://www.travelbooks.co.uk/book_detail.asp?id=178

Little Genghis Episode 1

Little Genghis is a collaboration between Nicolas Journoud and Steppe. Conceived in the early days of Steppe, it took five years to find the right illustrator to make the idea reality, and the reality full of ideas. Nicolas sums up the concept of Little Genghis as follows: ‘The day Genghis, a very sensible little shepherd boy, leaves behind the mountains and his family to live with relatives, he discovers the two wierdest universes in the world: the city and girls. But cities, he finds, are sometimes logical.’

We love Nicolas’s work. To see more, check out his website on www.ex-patria.org, and watch out for more blogs from Little Genghis.

Chuval Large Tent Bag, Front Panel 145 x 73 cm South Turkmenistan. Salor Late 18th Century © Greiner Studios GmbH, Neustadt

Turkmen Carpets: Masterpieces of Steppe Art, from 16^th to 19^th Centuries – The Hoffmeister Collection. Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2011, $95

Peter Hoffmeister’s first encounter with a Turkmen carpet in the early 1970s, whilst searching for beautiful things to furnish his home, struck a chord with his “sense of great art to the full”. During the ensuing forty years he has collected these textiles with a passion, inspired by their beauty, their nomadic creators and the historical roots of their design.

The excellent, high-quality photographs in this book allow you to get a real appreciation of these carpets. Spend time pouring over any of the images and it is hard not to become absorbed by the stylised geometric tribal emblems or göl at the heart of the Turkmen carpet. The book’s author, Dr Elena Tsareva, head of textile research at the Kuntskamera Museum in St Petersburg and an expert on Central Asian textiles, reinforces this feeling, describing how “Ornaments and colours are among the most ‘talkative’ of ‘visual texts’, serving as a kind of lingua franca able to carry age-old messages, irrespective of when and by whom they were created.”

In a departure from other books on the subject – and there are a large number – her text takes the form of twelve stories, some applying a broad brush, others deeply focused, with subjects ranging from the carpets of different tribes to a particular type of knot.  Throughout, the book is tinged with a certain kind of magic, although I can’t put my finger on whether that is a result of the passionate eye of the collector, the profound and interesting knowledge of the author, the carpets themselves – everyday usable repositories of tradition, lore and pure beauty in a sandy, desert world – or a combination of all three.