The Places In Between
by Rory Stewart
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Book Reviews of The Places In Between
Book Review: A Minority Opinion: Why?
Summary: 3 Stars
"The Places in Between" is about a guy from Scotland who walks the breadth of Afghanistan-for no apparent reason. "Why", indeed. This reviewer was perplexed that only the starting and end points of the trek were in the Rand McNally World Atlas. What a remote country! Rory Stewart had his work cut out for him: He chose to walk in Wintertime and to avoid roads, taking instead a virtual off-trail bushwhack. Along the way, he meets some very generous folks who give him nightly shelter, an apparently fast-disappearing tradition in that country. Who can blame the Afghans after invasions by Russia and the Taliban? Rory has abundant assumptions: This and other reviewers felt the author simply imposed himself on his hosts, presuming he-and his acquired dog-would be given nightly shelter and food after arriving unannounced. That dog becomes PIB's most interesting character. Stewart's personality permeates the text when it should have been secondary. One previous reviewer opined that he was "taken with himself"- an accurate if tart description. The author/walker does have two shining attributes: The first is his tenacity to even attempt, let alone complete, such an adventure. The other is presence of mind. Rory has to adapt to a few sudden situations and he handled them quite well. However the bottom line to this review is murky. PIB is not easily recommended, for several reasons: The photos are of poor quality and the MAPS (!) are worse than worthless! That point is common enough in many texts but still annoying. His drawings of the folks he encountered serve little purpose. Also, as an occasional weekend hiker, this reviewer would have liked more information on equipment: What kind of pack did he carry? Rory makes no mention. Which gear did he take and how did he arrange it in the pack he must have had? Did he ever re- supply himself and how? Which rations did he bring and how did he keep them from spoiling. What clothes or foul weather provisions did he bring? How did he dry them out or clean them? There is some mention of medicines but very little. What the author fails to mention is as meaningful as what he does. The final rating here is 3 stars, based not on PIB's content but on the author's sheer physical accomplishment of trekking across a dangerous and mysterious land.
Book Review: Curiously flat and disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
I really tried to like this book more. I really did. My wife gave it to me with a rave review of her own. On paper you cannot miss with an idea like this one -- a lone traveller walks across Afghanistan just months after the fall of the Taliban, exploring remote parts of the country that few westerners have ever seen. Stewart speaks the main languages of the region, so he can tell us first hand what happens.
Most of the book is in the form of short chapters which relate what happened on each of the days he walked. This is where the first problem starts -- most of the chapters are so brief (some of them barely more than three pages) that it gives the book a very choppy feel.
And then there is the challenge of the people he meets. What Stewart tries to show is that as he walks from one town to the next the nature of the country is constantly changing, in part because of the many different clans, tribes and tribes there are. The place feels like a collection of mutually suspicious enclaves rather than a country and is therefore very hard to govern properly. This, he says, is what the West should have paid more attention to before it started on its misguided attempt to build a modern nation from a motley collection of tribes with beliefs that would not have been out of place in the 14th century.
As Stewart drags the reader behind him from one dump to the next, you slowly come to the conclusion that many of the people he meets really aren't all that pleasant or interesting. Most of them are dirt poor and suspicious of outsiders. If it weren't for the local culture, which obliges villagers to take in itinerant guests, you'd imagine that a lot of these people would happily try to rob him or kill him (and some do take pot shots at him on the way). The one time he stumbles across an hidden historical jewel the locals are busily dismantling it to sell for a pittance at various markets.
After a while Stewart starts to feel a bit sorry for himself and this seeps into the text. We hear far too much about his dysentry and other ailments. He adopts a large dog for protection and soon has closer feelings for the animal than he does the Afghans he encounters on the way. The end result is a flat and remarkably dispiriting book.
Book Review: an adventure featuring brazen foolishness
Summary: 4 Stars
When it comes to travel writing, you've either got it (I'm thinking Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin), or you don't. Rory Stewart comes real close to not having it; however, he redeems this narrative of retracing the route of Babur, an 8th Century conqueror, with some pretty precocious writing.
Stewart does his descriptions well; perhaps what is missing is the seasoning of experience.
Why he felt this great urge to walk through Afghanistan, two months after the fall of the Taliban, and in the middle of winter, is never made clear to the reader (although he does say he's not good at explaining why he did this trek - not real convincingly either). He mixes his walkalogue with historical asides of the places he passes through - Afghanistan is depicted as a land of contrasts: attempts at comprehending the modern resistances of different tribal groups (Pashtun, Hazara, and Tajik) have to be seen in the light of ancient histories.
He passes through historic places of the Silk Road (the former villages of Jam and Chist-e-sharif); his knowledge of Dari and Persian is enough to enable him to converse with the various villagers. Along the way, he adopts a mastiff who accompanies him on half of this journey from Herat to Kabul. Some of his experiences are harrowing - one has to wonder about Stewart's brazen foolishness at these times.
This narrative is not a "flatout masterpiece", as the NY Times Book Review would have it. Although Stewart is good with the descriptions, like I've mentioned, the narration gets slushy at times (mirroring the terrain being slushed through I suppose). Babur's journals are overquoted to the point of making the narrative get slack; that could be another downer point here.
That Rory Stewart pushed his luck and tempted his fate, as youthful exuberance does, is really what lies between the lines of this book. He emerges from this ordeal to tell the tale - which comes off as a young man who has a couple of pretty close shaves with having his head cut off.
Four stars (barely) on this one.
The Cloud Reckoner
Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts
Book Review: Attempts At Understanding Rural Afghanistan
Summary: 3 Stars
When I picked this book off the bookstore table, I really only had a vague idea that it was one man's story about traveling through Afghanistan. Beyond that, I didn't know what to expect.
The book tells the story of Rory Stewarts walk across Afghanistan, from Herat to Kabul, and some of the people, villages, and feelings he had along the way. He states he wanted to walk across Asia, and this part helped to complete this quest. He managed to do this shortly after the Taliban were defeated in 2002, which is a bit interesting.
I can't say that I was fascinated by this book, yet I can't say that I was disappointed, either. I am glad I read it. I've a few books about Afghanistan that were centered in Kabul, and it was interesting to find out more information regarding the rural parts of Afghanistan and to find out just how drastic the difference between the two are. We here in the US always hear about how difficult it is fighting a war in rural Afghanistan because of the geography and because of tribalism. This book really helped to bring an understanding of those concepts to me. In that, I found the book fascinating.
The book does seem to drag, however. And the villages do seem to be strikingly similar until they all seem to fade together. Chapter after chapter of villages one cannot find on a map filled with nothing but mud huts gets a bit tedious to read about. Yet, for me, anyway, when Mr. Stewart speaks to the historical parts of Afghanistan, I found it be very interesting. And when he spoke of the people he met along the way, I was fascinated. He did seem to dwell on those individual who were less than savory, though. It would have been refreshing to read more about people he'd met who had been nice, helpful, and thoughtful. I'm sure there must have more than just 3 or 4?
I did enjoy reading about the various customs within some of the different tribes. I thought that to be very interesting. Some of the items Mr. Steward writes about were amusing, some were shocking to my Western mindset, and some were just outright disturbing (the Afghan Islamic view on the treatment towards dogs was especially difficult for this dog lover!). In all it was an interersting book, but there were some flaws.
Book Review: Village to Village - Mud Hut to Mud Hut ... (2.5 *s)
Summary: 2 Stars
and that is mostly of what this book consists. The author in his thirty-day walk from Herat to Kabul across mountainous central Afghanistan in the dead of winter encounters a village every twenty miles that is unrememberable because of its sameness. There is always a local chieftain, also pretty much indistinguishable, to whom everyone defers, who is lord over abysmal, backwards, and completely unsanitary living conditions, a major factor in the author's constant diarrhea.
The adventure itself untaken only a few weeks after the Taliban was deposed by the American onslaught in late 2001 was definitely an exercise in sheer audacity and luck. It doesn't seem possible that a Western, non-Muslim white-man could walk 600 miles without a map in completely foreign and harsh territory, mostly alone, while encountering severe winter weather, contending with debilitating dysentery, and having to constantly persuade and deceive suspicious, if not hostile, locals, even Taliban types, that he was not a threat and was deserving of the assistance of food and shelter.
The author is remarkably reticent in providing details of his background and motivation in undertaking this journey and several others in the region. There are some historical details injected into the narrative as he journeys through villages and regions. The route was chosen to be similar to one undertaken by a sixteenth century Afghan warlord. Unfortunately, disconnected historical tidbits hardly provide a coherent understanding of the history of the region.
This book was regarded by the NY Times as being in the top five nonfiction books of 2006. That is surprising. The book lacks context - virtually on page 1 the walk begins -and is so repetitious that it is a struggle to continue. The reader is left with a highly fragmented understanding of a very remote region of the world that is several centuries behind modern civilization. Probably the most compelling aspect of the book was the author acquiring a dog, a large mastiff, a few days into his journey with whom he fought the elements and warded off other village dogs. There may be enough content in the book to justify spending the time with it.