Book news: The Forever War
By Dave
October 11th, 2008 | Leave a comment
The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, a New York Times correspondent, details his eyewitness accounts of events in Afghanistan in the late 1990s to the U.S. invasion of Iraq starting in 2003.
Critics say Filkins brings a clear-eyed view that cuts through the fog of war, and few conflicts have been murkier than the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Review by Stacey Rae Brownlie in BookBrowse:
If there is any writer who can bring this convolution of conflicts, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, back to our attention, it is Dexter Filkins. Filkins is an award-winning reporter, a veteran foreign correspondent who is nearly fearless in his pursuit of human stories. He was one of a small group of journalists and aid workers who were in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. He returned to Afghanistan after the 2001 attacks, staying through much of 2002 and then moved to Iraq as the American invasion began in 2003. He stayed in Iraq for over three years, recording (in 561 notebooks), writing - and surviving. The Forever War gives us the opportunity to look over the shoulder of someone who has been there, who has spoken to nearly every segment of Afghani and Iraqi society and has witnessed the death, destruction, hope and absurdity of war ….
Filkins replies to a question: Why did you write The Forever War, and why did you choose that title?
Whenever I went home to the U.S., people would ask me: what’s it like over there? What does it feel like? What’s it like to be shot at? What’s it like to be woken up by a car bomb? What’s it like to sleep in a village with no electricity? How do you talk to a warlord? Hence my book: I want to show people what it feels like to be in Iraq and Afghanistan: the ambiguity, the heartbreak, the fear and the joy. It’s a visceral book, not really an intellectual one.
As for the title, I should say: the book makes no argument. It is very explicitly not a political book. The title, “The Forever War,” is more metaphor than literal truth. (At least I hope it is). The first chapter of the book takes place in 1998, at the Kabul Sports Stadium, at a public execution carried about by the Taliban on a Friday afternoon. It’s 2008 now, and we are still at war. I’ve expended much of my life’s energies in those wars. Many of us have. It already feels like forever, and it isn’t even over yet.
On Afghanistan:
It was a very strange time. The Taliban were so weird; it was like they were from another century, another galaxy. In those days I was just mystified by Afghanistan - what it was, where it was going. Any Westerner who was there - reporters or aid workers; we were about the only ones - felt exactly the same way. What the hell is this? Where is it going? We could tell things there were going bad, that they were headed toward some terrible end. We just knew; we could feel it. Once, I think it was in the summer of 2000 - I actually told my editors back home: “Something really bad is going to happen here.” But of course I didn’t know what. When the planes hit the towers on September 11, it all came together.
To read the Q&A, CLICK HERE.
To read the review, CLICK HERE.
Read about Khaled Hosseini’s acclaimed books, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, CLICK HERE.
To get a taste of Taliban, view this video:
The Forever War by Dexter Filkins.
Hardcover (September 2008), 384 pages.
Publisher: Knopf.
ISBN 9780307266392
