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An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan, by Jason Elliot
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Part historical evocation, part travelogue, and part personal quest, An Unexpected Light is the account of Elliot's journey through Afghanistan, a country considered off-limits to travelers for twenty years. Aware of the risks involved, but determined to explore what he could of the Afghan people and culture, Elliot leaves the relative security of Kabul. He travels by foot and on horseback, and hitches rides on trucks that eventually lead him into the snowbound mountains of the North toward Uzbekistan, the former battlefields of the Soviet army's "hidden war." Here the Afghan landscape kindles a recollection of the author's life ten years earlier, when he fought with the anti-Soviet mujaheddin resistance during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Weaving different Afghan times and visits with revealing insights on matters ranging from antipersonnel mines to Sufism, Elliot has created a narrative mosaic of startling prose that captures perfectly the powerful allure of a seldom-glimpsed world. Jason Elliot's An Unexpected Light is a remarkable, poignant book about Afghanistan and a heartfelt reflection on the experience of travel itself.
- Sales Rank: #311627 in eBooks
- Published on: 2011-08-02
- Released on: 2011-08-02
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
An account of a trip through war-torn and poverty-stricken Afghanistan, this remarkable book could have been titled "An Unexpected Beauty." Elliot, who first traveled to the country as a 19-year-old enthusiast of the mujahedin, has no illusions about the inherent shortcomings of travel writing ("a semi-fictional collection of descriptions that affirm the prejudices of the day"). He also dismisses the journalistic method, which relies on a single bombed-out street in Kabul to monolithically represent an entire nation. So it is not without some self-deprecation that he offers his own strange and improbable adventures in the country's lawless stretches and perilous mountain passes. "I had in mind a quietly epic sort of journey," he explains. "I had given up on earlier and more ambitious schemes and was prepared to make an ally of uncertainty, with which luck so often finds a partnership." Humorous, honest and wry, a devotee of Afghanistan's culture, Elliot strives to debunk the myth of "the inscrutability of the East" and paint, in careful detail, a portrait of a deeply spiritual people. For a first-time author, his literary talents are exceptional. His sonorous prose moves forward with the purposeful grace of a river; it reads like a text unearthed from an ancient land. (Feb.) Forecast: Already lauded in England, this book announces the arrival of a major travel writer. It should capture the hearts of armchair travelers who long for the grace, wit and irreverence of an era long gone.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This extraordinary debut is an account of Elliot's two visits to Afghanistan. The first occurred when he joined the mujaheddin circa 1979 and was smuggled into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan; the second happened nearly ten years later, when he returned to the still war-torn land. The skirmishes that Elliot painstakingly describes here took place between the Taliban and the government of Gen. Ahmad Shah Massoud in Kabul. Today, the Taliban are in power, but Elliot's sympathies clearly lie with Massoud. Although he thought long and hard before abandoning his plan to travel to Hazara territory, where "not a chicken could cross that pass without being fired on," Elliot traveled widely in the hinterland, visiting Faizabad in the north and Herat in the west. The result is some of the finest travel writing in recent years. With its luminous descriptions of the people, the landscape (even when pockmarked by landmines), and Sufism, this book has all the hallmarks of a classic, and it puts Elliot in the same league as Robert Byron and Bruce Chatwin. Enthusiastically recommended for all travel collections.DRavi Shenoy, Naperville P.L., IL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From The New Yorker
As a nineteen-year-old on holiday from his native England, Elliot crossed illegally into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and spent weeks with the mujahideen in the mountains near Kabul. Ten years later, with the Taliban gaining strength, he returned to the country as a journalist, his cowboy streak only slightly tempered by age. What saves this book from being just a swashbuckling travelogue is Elliot's far-reaching knowledge of Afghan history and his willingness to mock himself. After begging the Afghan fighters to take him on a military operation, he finds himself crouched in a cornfield and suddenly homesick: "I knew then that I lacked the qualities necessary for guerrilla warfare."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
Most helpful customer reviews
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Like Newby, Murphy, Asher, Thesiger? Then here's your man!
By Richard L. Wilson
An extraordinary book that transcends the bounds of travelogue and gives us deep and personal insight into one of the most the world's most inaccessible regions. Elliot's Afghan friends and travel companions convey, in the midst of the grief and difficulty of war, an enviable warmth and humor that has made the country a favorite of travelers for decades before the Soviet invasion. There are many hair raising trips in overloaded trucks over vertiginous mountain passes, lavish descriptions of ruins seldom seen by westerners, and intriguing historical facts from this crossroads of peoples for the traveler, adventurer and historian. Elliot writes from the heart and out of love for the Afghan people and land and this shines through on every page more than any such book I've read since Thesiger's Arabian Sands (and upon inspection, even Thesiger's motives begin to seem cloudy compared with Elliott's affection and respect for his subjects). You will put this book down with a profound respect for the Afghan people and immense desire to visit this land... I cannot recommend this book highly enough - if you read it you will soon find yourself searching through old travel guides and looking for a way to travel the roads of Afghanistan first hand.
56 of 58 people found the following review helpful.
Afghanistan's Conscience in the West
By Daniel J. Rose
Of the currently posted reviews, it is interesting that they either rate this book at the top or at the bottom of the rating scale. This is a sign that the book elicits much more comment on the reviewer's state of mind than on the book itself. My review will be no different.
While I second those who extoll the book's poetry and its vivid portrayal of the Afghan land and culture, to me the real value of the book lies in its deepest appeal to the conscience (or lack of conscience) in the reader. Mr. Elliot's report is unique in that it covers two or three visits that he undertook that span the time during and after the Soviet war, just prior to Taleban occupation of Kabul and the roughly 90% of Afghanistan that it occupies today.
During this time, under extremely difficult circumstances, Mr. Elliot had access to people and places that would shortly be cut off and, in many cases, destroyed during the ensuing Taleban onslaught. The result, both of the circumstances and Mr. Elliot's reporting on them, is a tale filled with longing--a longing for some of what is, much of what was and has been lost, and what may never be recovered, an innocence and deeply human sympathy ravaged by the cynicism of the world.
Afghanistan was never an easy place to live, but it was long a place where humanity reigned supreme in the daily lives of common people. Some have called it the height of civilization, low-tech though it was. It had long been the seat of a kind of basic (and advanced) hospitality that has been all but lost, though much imitated, in much of the rest of the world. Elliot's deep love and intimate knowledge of these people and the remaining remnants of their culture informs every page of his vivid account.
In the end, he leaves those of us with the conscience to respond with a deep sense of loss, yet with a vivid picture of hope for the future of our common human destiny. Yes, he makes us want to visit what was once Afghanistan, the Land of the Free. But even more, he makes us accutely aware of the Jewel that has been lost and that we must all find again to restore the vital center of our own particular human culture where we happen to live, among the common people of our daily lives.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Outsiders Inside Look at Afghanistan
By M. Swinney
Jason Elliot immerses himself into Afghanistan twice, once in 1979 with the Mujahadeen, and once again in 1989 to see a land still in the throes of war. Perhaps he will still get a chance to revisit the country in 2009, to get a perspective of the latest iteration of warfare and it's nature and tragic effect on the people of the Country. At this rate anything's possible.
I almost dinged this book for Elliot's occasional writing style that dips into the area of over-flowery, fanciful, and meandering, but surprisingly enough if you keep reading, he keeps this distraction to a minimum.
I believe what Elliot achieves with "An Unexpected Light" is the best account of what Afghanistan and its people are like that can be achieved by a Western writer. The reader must be cautioned to not take Elliot's perception at face value for the truth of how Afghani's think and feel and live. That local perspective would have to be gained by a book that was written by an Afghani and translated into English. To my knowledge there isn't a book out there like that available to English readers. If you know of one, by all means shoot it my way.
At first I thought the approach Elliot was taking in writing this book, was to toss himself haphazardly into as many life-threatening situations as humanely possible to experience and still live through it. Through these blood pressure pumping situations, at the end, Elliot would have himself a damn fine book. What I came to realize though is that the book was written about a love affair. A continual burning love affair that Elliot has for the country and especially the people of Afghanistan. That intense love shows, earning this book a special place amongst other travel writings. The work fills a distinct need to learn more about a country that Western nations' find themselves enmeshed in during the ongoing war on terrorism.
Internalize this book. There's a need to make that knowledge your own. Now more than ever.
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