The Places In Between
Through these encounters-by turns touching, con-founding, surprising, and funny-Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
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 © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Stewart, a resident of Scotland, has written for the New York Times Magazine and the London Review of Books, and he is a former fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In January 2002, having just spent 16 months walking across Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal, Stewart began a walk across Afghanistan from Herat to Kabul. Although the Taliban had been ousted several weeks earlier, Stewart was launching a journey through a devastated, unsettled, and unsafe landscape. The recounting of that journey makes for an engrossing, surprising, and often deeply moving portrait of the land and the peoples who inhabit it. Stewart relates his encounters with ordinary villagers, security officials, students, displaced Taliban officials, foreign-aid workers, and rural strongmen, and his descriptions of the views and attitudes of those he lived with are presented in frank, unvarnished terms. Nation building in Afghanistan remains a work in progress, and this work should help those who wish to understand the complexities of that task. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"A flat-out masterpiece...In very nearly every sense, too good to be true." (The New York Times Book Review )
"Stupendous...an instant travel classic." (Entertainment Weekly )
"Sets a new standard for cool nerve and hot determination...Sublimely written." (Seattle Times )
"A splendid tale that is by turns wryly humorous, intensely observant, and humanely unsentimental." (Christian Science Monitor )
"Stunning...Contribute[s] greatly not only to our reading pleasure, but to our understanding of Afghanistan." (The Plain Dealer )
"Engaging and eminently readable...A masterly job." (Library Journal )
"Remarkable...Gripping account of a courageous journey, observed with a scholar''s eye and a humanitarian''s heart." (Kirkus Reviews )
Customer Reviews
Gutsy
A fearless ramble into war-stricken Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. Only few could accomplish such a feat as Rory Stewart. The dangers are numerous, but he steps these aside and continues through a country many of us would just rather avoid.
Although I was expecting a livelier, more cohesive and spirited read, Mr. Stewart does give insight to the individuals and landscapes of a highly misunderstood culture and country, both past and present.
Possibly one hurdle to overcome for a "westerner" are the names of the people, towns and regions.
A courageous undertaking.
Tangible Realism
Rory Stewart's The Places in Between is a riveting account of modern day Afghanistan. By walking from Herat to Kabul in the middle of winter Stewart's journey unwraps the indescribable chaos caused by 25 years of war and western intervention. He does not make excuses for war. Rather his historical notes and cultural insights help to give shape to why western efforts to aid war torn Afghanistan are largely unsuccessful. His authentic account of rural Afghan culture and history illuminates the vunralbility to both Taliban and super power influences.
Stewart does not push a post modern agenda of democracy, human rights, and gender equality--or even "the war on terror". In some respects his writing seems self serving and arrogant. He is not in Afghanistan to help, but rather to complete a self driven mission--to walk across Asia. Yet, because of his drive he is able to communicate to the western world a first person account of areas that are largely untouched by the media. This is what makes his work important.
His writing is humane, respectful to the people that he meets along the way and his prose is often without emotion. It's his deadpan that captivates. His is a journey not many would undertake. Along the way he has many fellow walkers--some armed guards, some local village people, and a dog he names Babur. The incredulity of walking across a land that the world considers deadly shows both his tenacious spirit and his Scottish stubbornness. But readers are thankful that he made such a trek, because his journey helps teach and we are the better for having read it.
A snapshot of Afghanistan in 2001
I read this book right after having seen "Charlie Wilson's War", so the impact on my knowledge of Afghanistan is probably influenced by the light and ironic interpretation of the movie.
Rory Stewart a journalist and former fellow of the Carr Center for Human Right's Policy has written a diary of his one month journey on foot through Afghanistan.
The many reviews and the apparently great fortune of this book rely on it's subject, Afghanistan, it's timing, right after 9/11, the way the Author traveled, rigorously by foot with the company of a dog.
Let's start from the end. Traveling by foot or trekking is the most primitive and essential type of travel that unites the detailed coverage of the territory (how can we know something better than having walked it down) to the pure joy and hypnotic exercise of walking. Only true walkers can understand this feeling. Rory Stewart is apparently a great walker and in his book he underlines the importance of the way he traveled in many occasions, reversing Machiavelli's "the end justifies the means" with "the means justifies the end". The timing: after 9/11 and the fall of the Taliban was a dangerous and apparently insanely chosen moment, but in reality the displacement of the pre-existing equilibrium consented a "free window" to the penetration of the soul and the soil of the country. The subject: Afghanistan is one of the last places on earth each of us would travel through but at the same time it is the focal point of world politics, the tail of the cold war between Russia and America, the cradle of Islamic integralism that is shattering our deepest national securities (and here I'm talking not only of the US but also of Europe).
The company of a dog named Babur after the emperor that traveled the same route in the Fifteenth Century touches the heart strings of many animal lovers and consent s a digression in the monotony of the trip.
The Author has well studied his travelogue technique and it would be unthinkable that a young Scottsman hadn't read Kipling, Robert Byron, Darlrymple, Newby, Chatwin, Thubron and other English travelers that have visited the same country. From these Authors he draws his well oiled writing technique that guaranties the immediate and enjoyable readability of I repeat a monotonous journey.
The idea of following a previous historical traveler, that in this case is the emperor Babur is not new and the excerpta from the Barburnama are a little to long and sometimes do not make a point.
All together subject, timing, trekking, company and writing technique make an interesting book that appears like a snapshot in time of the unfortunate country of Afghanistan. However we never really manage to touch the soul of the Author or of the country he visited. Its only through the plethora of people and situations described that we can build an idea of the Afghan reality. This unemotional description of reality is probably modern and scientific but leaves me hungering for a more participating traveling companion.
This book was published in fortunate circumstances and this I think is one of the reasons for its great success, but I think it will not stand the test of time or become a classic of travel literature.
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