Rory Stewart was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Malaysia. After a brief period in the British army, he joined the Foreign Office, serving in the Embassy in Indonesia and as British Representative in Montenegro, Yugoslavia. In 2002 he completed a 6,000 mile walk from Turkey to Bangladesh. His account of crossing Afghanistan on foot shortly after the US invasion, The Places In Between, was published in 2004, drew widespread acclaim, and was shortlisted for that year's Guardian First Book Award. He was awarded an OBE in 2004 for his work in Iraq. From 2006 to 2008 he lived in Kabul, where he was the Chief Executive of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation; in 2009 he was appointed to a professorial chair at Harvard University as the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights; and in 2010 he was elected as Member of Parliament for Penrith and the Border.
This is traveling at its hardest and travel-writing at its best
*David Gilmour*
His encounters with Afghans are tragic, touching and terrifying
*Daily Telegraph*
[Stewart] must have balls of steel, but he writes like and angel
all the same
*Giles Foden*
This evocative book feels like a long lost relic of the great age
of exploration
*Guardian*
An astonishing achievement: a unique journey of great courage
*Colin Thubron*
Wise, funny and marvelously humane
*Michael Ignatieff*
This is traveling at its hardest and travel-writing at its best --
David Gilmour
His encounters with Afghans are tragic, touching and terrifying *
Daily Telegraph *
[Stewart] must have balls of steel, but he writes like and angel
all the same -- Giles Foden
This evocative book feels like a long lost relic of the great age
of exploration * Guardian *
An astonishing achievement: a unique journey of great courage --
Colin Thubron
Wise, funny and marvelously humane -- Michael Ignatieff
We never really find out why Stewart decided to walk across Afghanistan only a few months after the Taliban were deposed, but what emerges from the last leg of his two-year journey across Asia is a lesson in good travel writing. By turns harrowing and meditative, Stewart's trek through Afghanistan in the footsteps of the 15th-century emperor Babur is edifying at every step, grounded by his knowledge of local history, politics and dialects. His prose is lean and unsentimental: whether pushing through chest-high snow in the mountains of Hazarajat or through villages still under de facto Taliban control, his descriptions offer a cool assessment of a landscape and a people eviscerated by war, forgotten by time and isolated by geography. The well-oiled apparatus of his writing mimics a dispassionate camera shutter in its precision. But if we are to accompany someone on such a highly personal quest, we want to know who that person is. Unfortunately, Stewart shares little emotional background; the writer's identity is discerned best by inference. Sometimes we get the sense he cares more for preserving history than for the people who live in it (and for whom historical knowledge would be luxury). But remembering Geraldo Rivera's gunslinging escapades, perhaps we could use less sap and more clarity about this troubled and fascinating country. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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