Bookworm

By the time you read this, Bookworm's old friend James Fergusson may well be halfway up a mountainside somewhere in Afghanistan talking to the Taleban.

He left Edinburgh on Thursday on a research trip for his next book, as yet untitled, about the Afghan guerrillas with whom, he contends, Britain and her Nato allies will, sooner or later, have to cut a deal.

"What I want to find out is what makes them tick," says Fergusson, who has grown an impressive beard to help him blend in. "It's an interesting time. There are all these rumours of secret talks in Saudi Arabia, and then of course one of their top leaders was picked up by the Pakistani secret service last month. Perhaps things are happening behind the scenes – but in any case I'm convinced that we will find ourselves talking to them before too long."

Edinburgh-based freelance journalist Fergusson argued as much in his last book, One Million Bullets (Corgi, 6.99), which drew on his knowledge of Afghanistan and his own interviews with Taleban leaders (he's been a regular visitor to the country since 1997). The book, which offers a reasoned and well-researched analysis about what allied intervention can realistically expect to achieve in Afghanistan, was last October voted the British Army Book of the Year.

As part of the prize, Fergusson had to give a talk about it at the Aldershot army barracks. "That was a bit hairy, because on the same day that I turned up, five soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. And there I was, being rude about the policy for which they were risking their lives." Actually, he points out, they were a really thoughtful and receptive audience, and nearly everyone at the lecture bought a copy of his book.

Back to the Taleban. How safe will he be next week? "I don't really know. It's all down to the fixers. I'm slightly nervous – but nowhere near as much as (my wife] Melissa."

CHINESE WHISPERS

"Imagine a zipper on your mouth," acclaimed novelist and short story writer Yiyun Li was told by her mother in China. There was, in Beijing just after the Tiananmen Square massacre, profound reasons for such self-censorship. Not telling what her parents had seen on that night was a matter of self-preservation.

For The Last Communist Virgin author Wang Ping – like Yiyun Li, now living and teaching in America – paranoia started even earlier. Growing up on a small island in the East China Sea, she aroused her mother's anger as a 12-year-old by digging up and reading a buried box of children's stories banned in the Cultural Revolution.

Are such censorship fears still relevant? That is just one of the questions to be addressed in the three-day China Inside-Out mini-festival that will take place in Edinburgh next week (11-13 March). Organised by Scottish PEN and sponsored by the Confucius Institute, its events – at which both writers will be interviewed – will look at the role of women authors in both Scotland and China. Full details on confuciusinstitute.ac.uk