- Published: 05/05/2016
- ISBN: 9781846276286
- Granta Books
- pages
The Punishment Of Virtue
Sarah Chayes
EBOOK EDITION WITH A NEW PREFACE
What happens when the War on Terror media circus packs up and leaves town? Sarah Chayes spent six years in Afghanistan in order to find out. Living in the old capital, Kandahar, dressing like a man and befriending the heroic Chief of Police, Akrem, she gained unparalleled access to tribal leaders, cunning warlords, jihadist insurgents and opium traders, as well as politicians, security chiefs and Pakistani Intelligence agents – all contending for power in this uniquely strategic place at a pivotal moment in its history. Hers is an urgent book, and a mesmerizingly readable story.
£9.99
A devastating indictment of the contradictions of US policy in Afghanistan by an extremely courageous woman. This is the inside story on Afghanistan after the Taliban by someone who knows and cares
Christina Lamb
The most gripping, sensitive, funny, perceptive and beautifully written book you will ever read on Afghanistan, US policy and nation building...Sarah Chayes gets to grips with warlords, drug lords and American Special Forces in a rumbustious, achingly funny, beautiful written book. It reminds me of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, except this is a romp through the post 911 world. Chayes makes history, politics and war more of a pleasure to read about than anything I have yet read... This is the best book to have come out of Afghanistan since 9/11... Sarah Chayes should be nominated as the next US Secretary of State.
Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban
This passionate and engaged dispatch from the field is in the best tradition of grass-roots reporting; it is, quite simply, the best book on Afghanistan since the invasion.
Hugh Thomson, Independent
From the Same Author
The Fight For Afghanistan
Sarah Chayes
Sarah Chayes has spent the past eight years in Afghanistan and knows the country from the inside. Living in the old capital Kandahar, dressing like a man, and befriending the heroic Chief of Police, Akrem, she gained unparalleled access to tribal leaders, cunning warlords, jihadist insurgents and opium traders, as well as politicians, security chiefs and Pakistani Intelligence agents – all contending for power in this uniquely strategic place at a pivotal moment in its history. Hers is an urgent book, and a mesmerizingly readable story.
