On the Road to Kandahar: Travels through conflict in the Islamic world - Softcover

Burke, Jason

3.91

369 ratings by Goodreads

9780141024356: On the Road to Kandahar: Travels through conflict in the Islamic world

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141024356 ISBN 13: 9780141024356

Publisher: Penguin, 2007

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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.

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Review:

A beuatifully written acount of a decade spent in Muslim
societies...intensely personal...absorbing and illuminating
-- Daily Mail

A personal odyssey shot through with vivid description and human
sympathy -- New Statesman

An astute guide to the range and complexity of the Islamic
world...Burke is worth listening to -- Sunday Telegraph

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

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

`A personal odyssey shot through with vivid description and human sympathy' -- New Statesman

`A view from the sharp end'
-- Daily Telegraph

`Fast-paced ... fascinating' -- Sunday Times

`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

Synopsis:

A brilliant, fearless journalist who knows huge areas of the Islamic world intimately, Burke now turns to the wider question of how we are to get to grips with radical Islam and what it really means. Burke has travelled all over the great arc of Islamic land, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, and he uses this in his new book to great effect to show how various and completely unmonolithic Islam really is and how the sort of standard Western generalizations about it are both stupid and dangerous.

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