A brilliant account of a death defying walk through Afghanistan Rory Stewart's sparsely poetic, and highly acclaimed account of his walk across Afghanistan in January 2002 has been hailed as a modern classic of travel writing. Travelling entirely on foot and following the inaccessible, mountainous route, Stewart was nearly defeated by the hostile conditions. With the help of an unexpected companion and the generosity of the people he met on the way, however, he survived to report back on a region closed to the world by twenty-four years of war.

About the Author

Rory Stewart was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Malaysia. After a brief period in the British Army, he studied history and philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford before joining the Foreign Office. He served in the British Embassy in Indonesia and as the British Representative in Montenegro. In 2000 he began walking from Turkey to Bangladesh, covering 6000 miles alone on foot across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal. In 2003, he became the coalition Deputy Governor of Maysan and Dhi Qar, two provinces in the Marsh Arab region of Southern Iraq. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2004 and is currently a Fellow of the Carr Centre at Harvard University.

Reviews

Scottish journalist Stewart trekked across Afghanistan shortly after the Taliban's fall and offers a rare opportunity to learn about a country much in the news but relatively unknown to most Americans. Fluent in several languages, Stewart communicated with an array of people and could quickly perceive hostility or danger. The trip followed the footsteps of Babur, a 15th-century emperor, whose quotations enrich the book. Stewart found a beautiful but violent land and learned more about its geography, history, religion, and politics from villagers, soldiers, rebels, and relief workers whom he encountered. The author demonstrates his fabulous way of handling difficult people and situations through a combination of brashness and humility. Near the end of this journey of survival, he befriends Babur, a retired fighting mastiff. Stewart is one of those rarities-an author who is also a splendid narrator. His accent and pronunciation of words from many languages are brilliant. Every library striving for a timely collection must add this title.-Susan G. Baird, Chicago Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

"'This is traveling at its hardest and travel-writing at its best' - David Gilmour 'an astonishing achievement: a unique journey of great courage' - Colin Thubron 'The Places in Between goes straight into the highest echelons of travel literature' - Wanderlust 'a writer in the tradition of Thesiger and Thubron' - Spectator '[this] evocative book feels like a long lost relic of the great age of exploration' - Guardian 'a mature debut, and an intelligent and illuminating introduction to this fascinating, unfortunate country.' - Telegraph '[Stewart] must have balls of steel, but he writes like an angel all the same.' - Conde Nast Traveller 'one of the most thrilling and informative books to have been written about that incredible country since Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana' - Country Life"

We never really find out why Stewart decided to walk across Afghanistan only a few months after the Taliban were deposed, but what emerges from the last leg of his two-year journey across Asia is a lesson in good travel writing. By turns harrowing and meditative, Stewart's trek through Afghanistan in the footsteps of the 15th-century emperor Babur is edifying at every step, grounded by his knowledge of local history, politics and dialects. His prose is lean and unsentimental: whether pushing through chest-high snow in the mountains of Hazarajat or through villages still under de facto Taliban control, his descriptions offer a cool assessment of a landscape and a people eviscerated by war, forgotten by time and isolated by geography. The well-oiled apparatus of his writing mimics a dispassionate camera shutter in its precision. But if we are to accompany someone on such a highly personal quest, we want to know who that person is. Unfortunately, Stewart shares little emotional background; the writer's identity is discerned best by inference. Sometimes we get the sense he cares more for preserving history than for the people who live in it (and for whom historical knowledge would be luxury). But remembering Geraldo Rivera's gunslinging escapades, perhaps we could use less sap and more clarity about this troubled and fascinating country. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.