Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2023
304 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
A powerful, timely memoir of a young Air Force linguist coming-of-age in a war that is lost.
When Ian Fritz joined the Air Force at eighteen, he did so out of necessity. He hadn't been accepted into college thanks to an indifferent high school career. He'd too often slept through his classes as he worked long hours at a Chinese restaurant to help pay the bills for his trailer-dwelling family in Lake City, Florida.
But the Air Force recognizes his potential and sends him to the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, to learn Dari and Pashto, the main languages of Afghanistan. By 2011, Fritz was an airborne cryptologic linguist and one of only a tiny number of people in the world trained to do this job on low-flying gunships. He monitors communications on the ground and determines in real time which Afghans are Taliban and which are innocent civilians. This eavesdropping is critical to supporting Special Forces units on the ground, but there is no training to counter the emotional complexity that develops as you listen to people's most intimate conversations. Over the course of two tours, Fritz listens to the Taliban for hundreds of hours, all over the country night and day, in moments of peace and in the middle of battle. What he hears teaches him about the people of Afghanistan—Taliban and otherwise—the war, and himself. Fritz's fluency is his greatest asset to the military, yet it becomes the greatest liability to his own commitment to the cause.
Both proud of his service and in despair that he is instrumental in destroying the voices that he hears, What the Taliban Told Me is a brilliant, intimate coming-of-age memoir and a reckoning with our twenty years of war in Afghanistan.
"Fritz holds nothing back in this raw and engrossing debut memoir about his experiences in Afghanistan as a cryptologic linguist for the U.S. Air Force...The grim subject matter is often leavened by welcome humor, and Fritz's slow-moving evolution from soldier to healer is profoundly moving. This is a standout wartime memoir." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A fraught, moving account by a conflicted soldier." —Kirkus Reviews
"The future of war has arrived; and the voices of its dead are in this haunting book." —Elliot Ackerman, author of The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan
"For most Americans, even for many servicemembers who deployed to Afghanistan, the Taliban proved a shapeless, inscrutable enemy over our two decades of war. Not so for Ian Fritz. As an airborne linguist tasked with listening in on suspected Taliban's communications, he grew to know them intimately, understanding their wants, fears, and dreams in ways that transcend the normal boundaries of war. What the Taliban Told Me is a beautiful book told with rare honesty and seeking and introduces Ian Fritz as a powerful moral and literary voice." —Matt Gallagher, author of Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War and the novels Youngblood and Daybreak
"This book is precisely what policymakers in Washington needed 20 years ago. What the Taliban Told Me achieves something that few War on Terror books have accomplished; it puts a human face on the enemy. This somber and well-crafted memoir is essential reading for anyone attempting to comprehend our war in Afghanistan. Fritz brings a fitting conclusion to 20 years of conflict in a land that Americans never truly understood." —Kevin Maurer, #1 New York Times bestselling author of No Easy Day
This information about What the Taliban Told Me was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ian Fritz was an Airborne Cryptologic Linguist in the United States Air Force from 2008-2013. He became a physician after completing his enlistment. Now, he writes.
The Witches at the End of the World
by Chelsea Iversen
Two sisters find themselves at odds in this historical fantasy set during a dark Norwegian winter.
This Is Salvaged
by Vauhini Vara
Stories of uncanny originality from Vauhini Vara, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
The silence between the notes is as important as the notes themselves.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
