An Unexpected Light on amazon.com
Reader Rating: 10/10
Salaams! An excellent book written with an elegance of prose seldom found in "travel" literature. Being his first, and as far as I can tell, his only book, this a remarkable feat for a young writer. A real joy to read. When will this guy write again?
"...I see first the light that I have seen nowhere else and which consumes in a single leap the impurity of distance so completely as to reveal the speck of a man two miles away; I see the profile of a mountain twenty miles away...I see three fantastic summits like spears with white tips rearing up to twenty thousand feet behind us, and down by the water's edge where the valley broadens, forests of small trees glowing gold and ginger in the winter sun with delicate pointed leaves and crimson berries the colour of a country girl's lips."
It is filled with engaging writing that pushes past surface description, interacting with and analyzing personal, historical, geographical, and cultural issues. Elliot is constantly pushing out to the edge and is transparent about his anxieties, fears, and growing confidence as he becomes a "veteran" through hardened experiences.
The book ranges far and wide across geographical and historical Afghanistan; Elliot weaves a rich tapestry of various local and expat characters (including some interesting comments on some of the M's he encounters!) on his various trips through some of the most inhospitable corners of the country. Here's one snippet that stuck out to me which relates very much to our own work and need for going deep in language/culture and building relationships:
"And I was staring not just because his face [a local commander] was utterly unlike the faces I knew from home but because I felt all of a sudden that if I were to attach myself to him, apprentice-like, and follow him to his home and enter into his life and language and hardships and battles and pleasures, I might learn something substantial about the country and its culture and all that was hidden from the casual onlooker I really felt myself to be, able only to observe what was most superficial."
Lots of gems--too many to recount here. You'll have to read it yourself--which I highly recommend you do! I'll leave you with one such gem:
"Not because the East is mystic or inscrutable, but because it reveals its secrets at a pace which the Western visitor is so seldom prepared to embrace: you need time."
Product Details:
• Paperback: 473 pages
• Publisher: Picador USA (October, 2001)
• ISBN: 0312288468
First Sentence:
So much has happened in that part of the world where our paths first crossed that it's hard not to think of our time there, and of the time in which it was contained, as an island, now submerged. Read the first page
Editorial Reviews
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.
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"If you're not standing on the Edge,
you're taking up too much room."
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