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First Published:
Sep 2004, 336 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2005, 336 pages
A burned-out war correspondent hoping for a last hurrah in Afghanistan arrives on the Afghan border just as American bombs begin falling on the ruling Taliban in this fast-paced, timely, and galvanizing novel.
His last novel, The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, was hailed as "a
relentlessly crackling mystery and adventure tale" (The Baltimore Sun)
and "a new standard for war-based thrillers" (Los Angeles Times). In
this electrifying new thriller, Dan Fesperman takes us to present-day
Afghanistan–the global capital of death long before it became a battleground
for America–where the fates of an American journalist and a Pakistani
translator become dangerously intertwined with the fortunes of warlords, spies,
and dubious corporate interests.
A burned-out war correspondent hoping for a last hurrah in Afghanistan, Skelly
arrives on the Afghan border just as American bombs begin falling on the ruling
Taliban. Seeking the scoop of a lifetime as witness to the capture of "the
biggest fish of them all," he links up with an exiled warlord's quixotic
expedition. Guiding Skelly's way is Najeeb, a tribal Pakistani with his own
objective–U.S. visas for his girlfriend and himself, promised by Pakistani
intelligence if he acts as an informant.
A harrowing crossing into Afghanistan is only the beginning of trouble for the
two men. Their journey quickly escalates into a race for their lives as they are
pulled into a vortex of intrigue, betrayal, and violence. Finally, only their
loyalty to each other holds out the possibility of survival for either of them.
Fast-paced, timely, and galvanizing from first to last.
Chapter One
The sun does not rise in Peshawar.
It seeps--an egg-white smear that brightens the eastern horizon behind a veil of
smoke, exhaust and dust. The smoke rises from burning wood, cow patties and old
tires, meager flames of commerce for kebab shops and bakers, metalsmiths and
brick kilns. The worst of the exhaust sputters from buzzing blue swarms of motor
rickshaws, three-wheeled terrors that careen between horse carts and overloaded
buses.
But it was the dust that Najeeb Azam knew best. Like him, it had swirled down
from the arid lands of the Khyber and never settled, prowling restlessly in the
streets and bazaars as if awaiting a fresh breeze to carry it to some farther,
better destination.
In the morning it coated his pillow, a faint powder flecked with soot. In the
evening he wiped it from his face and coughed cinders into a handkerchief, never
quite able to flush it from either pores or lungs. Wherever he traveled it went
along for the ride, a ...
Larry Gandle,author of Deadly Pleasures
Dan Fesperman has written two superb novels concerning war-torn Yugoslavia
from two different perspectives of time . . . Lie in the Dark won the
Creasey Award for best first crime novel and The Small Boat of Great Sorrows won
the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller. Now he returns in by far
and away his best work to date. In a sense it is sweeping in grandeur like Doctor
Zhivago, yet intimate enough to be reminiscent of a Graham Greene and
as a thriller intelligent enough to be in the same ranks of John LeCarre.
However, I predict Dan Fesperman will ultimately equal them in fame writing his
own type of stylistic war novels. This one is a masterpiece.With so much focus on Afghanistan's troubles over the last quarter decade it's easy to forget that this is a country with a long and cultured past. At a time when most of Western Europe was wallowing in the Dark Ages, following the fall of the Roman Empire, Afghanistan's location made it a pivotal meeting point between the countries of the East and West. Although most of the cultural treasures from that era have either been destroyed or have disappeared from the country, some have been recovered, including a cache of 20,000 golden objects which were thought to have been lost. National Geographic had an ...
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