Forsyth reigns supreme
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There are two reasons why people should read books: to have fun and to learn. If you are neither having fun nor learning anything, you are wasting your time. Frederick Forsyth, the best-selling author perhaps best known for his first novel, The Day of the Jackal (which served as the basis for the Bruce Willis assassin flick), returns with a fast-paced tale set in the context of the war against terror. The Afghan is sure to both educate and thrill the reader.
Forsyth fans will recall British commando Mike Martin from The Fist of God, Forsyth’s earlier bestseller about the Persian Gulf War. Martin returns as a retired old hand, brought back into service to infiltrate the dangerous world of Al Qaeda and stop a deadly plot from unfolding. The story spans several decades and stretches across many countries, from the mountains of Afghanistan in the 1980s to the American military base at Guantanamo Bay post-9/11, from London to Quetta, from the Sulu Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. I read it in two nights and a day.
Robert Conquest, the great historian at the Hoover Institution, once said that historical dates, like latitude and longitude, “help deploy the world for our minds to grasp.” Extending this logic to historical facts, Forsyth skillfully uses his knowledge of history to deploy his story. There are quite a few important facts that he gets right amidst the suspense and adventure. The vast majority of mujahideen who fought the Soviets in the 1980s were Afghans, not Arabs. We provided funds to Pakistan for them to equip mujahideen; the CIA wasn’t on the ground in Afghanistan teaching bin Laden how to fire Stinger missiles. The Taliban wasn’t created by the US; Saudi Arabia and Pakistan supported this group of radical students, which emerged after the Soviets were driven out. And on and on.
This is not to say that the book is perfect. Compared to The Fist of God, his latest is a tad short (eye-pleasing font-size and line-spacing help it clock-in at over 300 pages). The plot is also less twisty than some of his other books and certainly less intricate. A reader hoping for the complexity found in Icon, his book set in post-Soviet Russia, will be slightly disappointed. Some may also find his comments (voiced through the character of a professor) on religious fundamentalism overly politically correct and a tad tiring.
Forsyth obviously has had enormous respect for those who fight terror, so don’t worry about any of that Hollywood anti-American, anti-military, anti-common sense nonsense popping up anywhere. Both serious and fun, the book proves once again that Forsyth is the virtuoso of mindful escapism.
