The Places In Between by Rory Stewart Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Places In Between
Book Review: A new Baburnama
Summary: 5 Stars
The author travels across Afghanistan from Herat to Kabul by foot, only a couple of months after the US has taken down Taliban regime. It turns out that the route and the season match the travel of Babur, the Turko-Mongol warrior who conquered northern part of South Asia and established the Mughal empire. Along the way, the author adopts a canine companion and names him Babur.
The book stands out for its candor and lack of pretension. The author is not a journalist on war-driven adrenalin rush, trying to write that "important" book. Nor is the journey a vanity-driven tour seeking cheap adventures - the author seems motivated by some deep personal reason that even he's not quite sure of.
An illuminating travelogue.
Book Review: A sensible and respectful book
Summary: 4 Stars
As the reader might know, this book details a walking trip Mr Stewart did through Afghanistan in 2001.
In my opinion, the key interesting things about Mr Stewart's work include:
- It's respectful: he never tries to judge the different Afghan cultures he encounters. He actually tries to respect all customs and people, in order to continue his journey.
- It's sensible: in a very subdued way, Stewart reflects and brings us his feelings as we traversed through that troubled country.
- It's not an exciting, full-of-adrenaline book: it flows slowly and reflectively.
- Even though it's sort of a travel book, it does not fully delve into the "local attractions".
In summary, the book is about Mr Stewart's journey and about the things he saw, heard, lived and felt as he traveled. It's a different book to many others I read before.
I suggest this book to everybody. It's eye-opening, it's a good way to learn about other cultures respectfully. I will just warn the reader that I felt the book was too slow sometimes, and thus it took me a while to read it (you don't go back to read it with excitement). Still, it's memorable and special.
Book Review: A snapshot of Afghanistan in 2001
Summary: 3 Stars
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.
Book Review: A tale only a well-educated brave idiot could write
Summary: 4 Stars
When I first heard of this book I thought that walking across Afghanistan was one of the most dangerous ways of travel I could think of. After reading the book, I discovered I was entirely correct.
Due to the author's bravery/stupidity an amazing book appears. I found his writing to be rich, descriptive, but balanced. The people of Afghanistan are not irrational Islamic terrorists, but neither are they a helpful, friendly, and trustworthy bunch, who always look out for the needs of a stranger.
While the author meets his share of noble people, he also runs into thieves, liars, and thugs. He includes enough historical context to make the story relevant while still keeping the book a travel work at its core. The author is a talented observer with a gift for clear, but engaging prose. I am glad he wrote this book, since I felt as if I made the journey, without every having to walk an inch into Afghanistan
Book Review: A very curious book
Summary: 4 Stars
I walked halfway across Afghanistan with Rory Stewart. It was enough.
But then I felt compelled to return to this curious diary and reflection on the author's rugged, snowy trek in the first months after the fall of the Taliban.
The premise is remarkable itself. Having completed, on foot, most of his trip across southwest Asia, events conspire to allow him to complete the missing piece. In early 2002, he flies to Herat to begin a miserable journey to Kabul. His route through the center of the country follows a leader from centuries ago, Babur, avoiding the remaining Taliban forces near Kandahar but facing harsh weather and terrain. He repeatedly states that he is interested in Afghanistan today, not its history, but he tells his own story along with that of Babur, long-lost historical sites, and earlier travel writers of region.
He is genuinely unimpressed with most of the people he meets. His expectations of Muslim-dictated hospitality are frequently not met. He also tells of some auspicious occasions when he imagines his trip will come to a violent end. He travels with a dog, also Babur; it is an important but difficult relationship. Perhaps coloring all of his adventure and his writing, he is sick with dysentery much of the time, often in villages without running water much less decent WCs. There is little joy: it is more akin to Slavomir Rawicz's The Long Walk (to and from a Siberian gulag) than Marco Polo.
But for students, and the general reader, there is much to be learned. One simple example is the local unit of measure for distance: how many days walk? Relatedly, letters of introduction, from regional or local leaders, are his essential travel items. As he advances, the letters from the various leaders become less valuable, until finally they are a liability and must be replaced by new letters from different leaders.
More broadly, Stewart's accounts reveal the real distance between the "new government of Afghanistan" and its people. Stewart's village leaders vary widely in kindness and sophistication. But the number of people who have never traveled even to the next village, the half-informed versions of world events, the various local interpretations of Islam, the oral histories of fighting the Soviets, the Taliban and the other villages - all these combine to make Western notions of democratic reform seem other worldly.
But his experience provides for a remarkable career move: as a British diplomat in 2003 he is appointed as a deputy governor in occupied southern Iraq. His account is forthcoming in The Prince of the Marshes (August 2006; it is available already in UK as Occupational Hazards). It will be, one can only suspect, a remarkably different insider-view than Bremer's My Year in Iraq or Diamond's Squandered Victory.