On the Road to Kandahar

Oct 9, 2024 4:28 AM

Author:Jason Burke

From the bestselling author of Al-Qaeda, Jason Burke's On the Road to Kandahar reveals the true face of Islam in an age of global conflict.

In the summer of 1991 Jason Burke set off to join Kurdish guerillas fighting in Iraq. It was the start of a remarkable journey that would take him from the sands of the Sahara to the highest peaks of the Himalayas, revealing the true complexity and variety of the 'Islamic world'.

Describing encounters with hundreds of people ranging from destitute refugees to senior government ministers, from American snipers to hardened 'mujahideen', this extraordinary work of reportage is a vivid account of life and death, war and peace, bigotry and ignorance, hate and tolerance.

'Fast-paced ... fascinating'

  Sunday Times

'A personal odyssey shot through with vivid description and human sympathy'

  New Statesman

'A beautifully written account of a decade spent in Muslim societies ... intensely personal ... absorbing and illuminating'

  Daily Mail

'Makes mainstream coverage seem like a caricature ... by refusing to generalize, this illuminating first-hand exploration ... makes it clear the subject is far more complex than most Western commentators like to make out'

  Metro

Jason Burke is the South Asia correspondent for the Guardian. He has reported around the world for both the Guardian and the Observer. He is the author of two other widely praised books, both published by Penguin: Al-Qaeda and The 9/11 Wars. He lives in New Delhi.

Reviews

Both fun and funny. It is sharp too, in the sense of painful as well as witty... Barnes dissects with tremendous verve and insight this awesome inevitability of death and its impact on the human psyche. He also tears at your heart

—— New Statesman

A maverick form of family memoir that is mainly an extended reflection on the fear of death and on that great consolation, religious belief... It is entertaining, intriguing, absorbing...an inventive and invigorating slant on what is nowadays called 'life writing'. It took me hours to write this review because each reference to my notes set me off rereading; that is a reviewer's ultimate accolade

—— Penelope Lively , Financial Times

A brilliant bible of elegant despair...that most urgent kind of self-help manual: the one you must read before you die

—— Tim Adams , Vogue

Intensely fascinating

—— The Times

An elegant memoir and meditation. A deep seismic tremor of a book that keeps rumbling and grumbling in the mind for weeks thereafter

—— Garrison Keillor

An essay in the best sense: speculative and precise, intimate and metaphysical, capacious and democratic in the variety of voices, alive and dead, that are invited to counsel the author as he edges his way towards the void

—— TLS

Intensely serious book of striking elegance: a clever, complicated reverie on last things, so full of ideas as to reveal itself quite slowly, through frequent re-reading

—— Jane Shilling , Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year

A fantastic work of non-fiction, a showcase for his elegantly unfussy sentences and Barnes's ability to burrow to the very bottom of a subject, no matter how daunting

—— Colin Waters , The Sunday Herald

Julian Barnes takes on the ambitious subject of death - and succeeds brilliantly

—— William Leith , Scotsman

It is a sincere, humble work, punctuated by moments of poignancy

—— Colm Farren , The Irish Times

This year, its moving, sly, terrified grappling with the approach of extinction overwhelmed me

—— Andro Linklater , Spectator, Books of the Year

A rather beautiful account of the birth and evolution of Islam ... Lucid and illuminating ... Fascinating

—— Metro

Aslan is an engaging writer, his strength lies ... as an observer of contemporary challenges facing Islam ... Sensitive and generous

—— FT Magazine

Enthralling. A book of tremendous clarity and generosity of spirit

—— Jim Crace

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