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Games without Rules
- Author
- Tamim Ansary
- Narrator
- Tamim Ansary
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 27 November 2012
- Run Time
- 14 hours 40 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
Today, most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real, but it sits atop an older struggle between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan—a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam.
Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out and illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood. It is the story of a nation struggling to take form, a nation undermined by its own demons while, every forty to sixty years, a great power crashes in and disrupts whatever progress has been made. Told in conversational, storytelling style and focusing on key events and personalities, Games without Rules provides revelatory insight into a country at the center of political debate.
Critics Review
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“In Games without Rules, Tamim Ansary has written the most engaging, accessible and insightful history of Afghanistan. With gifted prose and revealing details, Ansary gives us the oft-neglected Afghan perspective of the wars, foreign meddling, and palace intrigue that has defined the past few centuries between the Indus and Oxus. This brilliant book should be required reading for anyone involved in the current war there—and anyone who wants to understand why Afghanistan will not be at peace anytime soon.”
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of Little America: The War within the War for Afghanistan
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“A breezy, accessible overview of centuries of messy Afghan history, including the present military quagmire…Lively instruction on how Afghanistan has coped, and continues to cope, with being a strategic flash point.”
Kirkus Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Tamim Ansary
- Narrator
- Tamim Ansary
- Duration
- 14 hours 40 minutes
- Release Date
- 27 November 2012
- ISBN
- 9781483060996
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Middle Eastern history, History, Asian history, General and world history, Asian history
Synopsis
Today, most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real, but it sits atop an older struggle between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan—a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam.Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out and illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood. It is the story of a nation struggling to take form, a nation undermined by its own demons while, every forty to sixty years, a great power crashes in and disrupts whatever progress has been made. Told in conversational, storytelling style and focusing on key events and personalities, Games without Rules provides revelatory insight into a country at the center of political debate.
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