Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Angelina Jolie pens a blurb for Gayle Lemmon’s Dressmaker of Khair Khana

Author/reporter Gayle Lemmon has met actress/activist Angelina Jolie only by e-mail. But both share an interest in female entrepreneurs in war-torn places such as Afghanistan. That explains how Jolie came to provide a blurb for the back jacket of TheDressmaker of Khair Khana, Lemmon’s book about a secret business under the Taliban, out March 15. “This book is guaranteed to move you — and to show you a side of Afghanistan few ever see,” Jolie writes. At a preview lunch in New York last week, Lemmon, who has reported from Afghanistan for the Financial Times, mentioned how a friend spotted Jolie on a relief flight into Afghanistan in 2008, “when security was really bad,” with “no fuss, no press. I have a lot of respect for what she’s been doing.”

Written by By Carol Memmott and Bob Minzesheimer

– 1/19/2011