About this title: In January 2002, Rory Stewart survived a walk across Afghanistan by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. In this memoir, he writes about heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers as he makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: PICADOR
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780330486347ISBN:0330486349
Description: Published by Picador in 2005. Paperback. Number of pages: 324. Condition: Acceptable. Reading copy ONLY Ex-library book (usual stamps and marks). Shipped from UK. Delivery is usually 2-3 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: PICADOR
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780330486347ISBN:0330486349
Description: Ex-Library Published by Picador in 2005. Paperback. Number of pages: 324. Condition: Good. Used book but in Good Condition for sensible price. Ex-library book (usual stamps and marks). Shipped from UK. Delivery is usually 2-3 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harvest Books
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780156031561ISBN:0156031566
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean inside out, tight binding, good cover. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 299 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Fair. 0156031566 Unread book with dj tear, bump or corner crease. This is a new book that received the wear during its handling. Has remainder mark. read more
Description: Good. 0156031566 Book could have shelf wear, or a bump, or sunfade to edges. These are new unread books from the publisher with one of these conditions. See are feedback as customers are satisfied in how we grade our books. Has remainder mark. Fast shipping and customer service is our number 1 priority! read more
Description: Good in Wear to cover/ Edges jacket. Differnt Cover, Text appears Free of Marks or Hi-lights, Wear to cover/edges, corner bent, slight cover flare NOTE: Standard/Media-mail can take over 21 business-days to arrive. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: PAN MACMILLAN Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780330486347ISBN:0330486349
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 324 pages. (324 pages) caught between hostile nations, warring factions and competing ideologies, at the time, afghanistan was in turmoil following the us invasion. this title presents an account of his walk across afghanistan. maps (Paperback) read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 01/04/2005
ISBN-13:9780330486347ISBN:0330486349
Description: Used-Good. Book in good or better condition. Dispatched same day from warehouse. Please email with any questions for quick response. read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 299 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harvest Books
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780156031561ISBN:0156031566
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. As new. No edgewear, markings or spine creasing. Pages bright and tight. Different cover than pictured. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 299 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
"It's an odd sensation in a travel book to be guided by a traveler who remains, for 300 pages, a cipher. Stewart reveals virtually nothing about himself or about his motive for undertaking his dangerous, difficult, and (evidently) unrewarding journey--on foot, no less. In fact, there's something distinctly bratty about Stewart's approach to the whole endeavor: he made the trip because he "wanted to," he repeats, and one can almost hear him stamping his foot; his evident lack of any need to support himself for years at a time (he has bundles of cash at his disposal and, at the end of the journey to Afghanistan, returns to "his room" in his parents' house in Scotland) and his conviction that he should be fed and housed by strangers all the way across Afghanistan (but not accompanied or told where to go) have a distinctly elitist and slightly juvenile ring to them, which is not completely surprising given Stewart's parentage and social status (read his Wikipedia biography to get a hint of the manor to which he was born). The people that he meets, meanwhile, are with few exceptions entirely dreadful--dull when they are not outright dangerous, rude when they are not simply miserable, malicious and sadistic when they are not merely indifferent. Nor are the villages he visits anything to write home about, each one essentially identical to another in its revolting, raw-sewage-and-war-debris sameness. The landscape--which Stewart frequently cannot see because he is walking through blinding snowstorms--gets even shorter shrift, and Stewart only occasionally remembers to describe the quality of light at sunset or the shape of a mountain range. Indeed, one gathers that all of that was wholly secondary; his goal was the destination (Kabul), never the journey. (And that's perhaps no surprise, given how ghastly Afghanistan appears in Stewart's version.) The inclusion, meanwhile, of the numerous grade-school-quality sketches that Stewart inked into his journal is a blunder that undermines what little seriousness the book can lay claim to. Stewart hints occasionally that he's bedeviled by unhappy memories or regrets as he walks, but that's as close as he lets anyone come to a glimpse of what's taking place inside his head or of what his reactions are to most of the things that happen to him. That's a fatal flaw in a book that has so little else to offer the reader. If the Afghans are essentially unknowable and alien, if the places are unremarkable and monotonous, and if the narrator slowly disappear as he writes, the whole edifice of the project crumbles. Stewart's only tears in the book are for an animal and never for the human misery he traipses through, as much proof as anyone should surely need that he is (or was) a callow, overprivileged youth on walkabout and that _The Places In Between_ got published through high-society connections and not because Stewart had anything particularly meaningful to say. In a country as barren and forbidding as Afghanistan, the places in between are largely voids, and it is a void that Stewart's book most faithfully transmits."
"It is what it is: a guy walks across Afghanistan. What do you think happens? A) he encounters very poor and poorly educated tribal/feudal lords B) he encounters hostile, backward, cruel teens and militia and former soldiers C) he walks 25 miles a day with not much to describe: rural Afghanistan is rural for a reason D) all of the above
D, of course D. Well, at one point he does get a dog. Now Rory can describe how Babur likes to sniff and pee and roll in snow.
I give Rory some credit for what he chooses to leave out (complaints--he is quite cheerful about what must have been bitter cold and about eating food that can't have been savory, about going hungry, and the lack of graciousness he encounters) and the genteel way he describes unsavory life realities (his dysentery, the lack of hygiene of his hosts). Toward the end of the book he bemoans that he hasn't gotten to understand the Hazara very well (one of the four ethnic groups in Afghanistan). I don't think that was a fair whine--his practice was to come to a village at dusk, stay one night, and head out in the morning, hardly conducive to sociological study. His goal was never to understand the Afghans by hanging with them--it was to walk across Afghanistan, a huge, formidable, mostly unfertile land, one of the world's poorest. Mission accomplished. But I find people more interesting than both goals and landscapes. I wish Rory did, too."
"This is a really amazing book. Rory Stewart approaches his post 9/11 walk (with no money!) through Afghanistan with a certain academic detachment. He keeps his journey grounded in the history of the country by tracing an ancient route and describes his interactions with the people that he meets with the distance of an anthropologist. Unlike in other travel books, Stewart does not glorify himself or anyone he meets. He also resists the temptation to villainize or judge even those who threaten him and instead describes all of his experiences with a matter- of- fact fatalism that provides a vivid glimpse into life in remote Afghanistan."
"Stewart is an upper class Brit who sustains the English tradition of adventurism. He has worked in Iraq (and done other things I cannot recall here) and in this book he tells of his walk across Afghanistan. It was an interesting tale, one in which he offers a picture of what life is like for many of the locals. It is not a happy existence, having to survive on land that is not very productive, at the edge of poverty for a lifetime, subject to the whims of the local warlords and bandits. One thing that stood out was the widespread activities of the Taliban, the degree of their atrocities, the thousands they had killed and how pervasive was their effect. They terrorized the nation. What was also notable, sadly, was how many of the people Stewart encountered had been members and even officials when it had been profitable to be a Taliban. One heart-wrenching piece here was Stewart's adopting a very large, old, and run-down dog, who became his travel companion and who he wanted to take home with him to Scotland. Stewart comes from the moneyed and connected class, having gone to school with Tony Blair's kid, yet he does not come across as full of himself or at all arrogant. Britain seems to produce adventurers and outdoorsmen as a normal part of their popular strain. Stewart is clearly a full-fledged member of that fraternity, carrying on a rich tradition. He would have gotten along swimmingly with Rudyard Kipling. The book is not wonderful. It drags at times. Stewart is a competent but not exceptional writer. But there is the richness of his enterprise here, and I expect that we will be hearing plenty more from Mister Stewart before he is done."
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