Esta es la historia de Adam Kellas, un corresponsal britanico que cubre el conflicto afgano. La novela empieza con un criptico mail que Adam recibe. Astrid, la mujer que amo, le escribe pidiendo ayuda y el no duda en dejarlo todo para ir a buscarla, olvidando en su ansia por que acabo su relacion. Atras deja la violencia y el sinsentido de la guerra y su imposibilidad de aceptar que Astrid no puede olvidar la suciedad y la angustia que rodearon la pareja.

Another dud. Unappealing macho writer character in orbit in the Middle East. Much jumping around in time sequences which confuses poor little me who likes a narrative. Ridiculous amount of detail on insignificant matters, e.g. how many bandages are available in Boots at the airport (it's a pharmacy, for God's sake!. When one of the other unappealing characters tells a shaggy-dog story, I started to feel the whole book was a shaggy-dog story, and stopped reading. ( )

J'ai été assez déçu par ce roman. J'avais été enthousiasmé par 'People's Act of Love' et n'ai pas retrouvé ce plaisir de dévorer un livre que j'avais alors éprouvé. La réflexion sur les guerres d'Afghanistan et d'Irak, sur le rôle du journaliste dans ces guerres modernes m'ont intéressé sans me convaincre totalement, il est vrai que j'ai parfois du mal à suivre la pensée de J.Meek sur ces thèmes. Mais l'histoire d'amour du héros avec la journaliste américaine ne m'a pas du tout intéressé et elle prend malheureusement beaucoup de place. ( )

Not bad, but disappointing after the brilliant 'People's Act of Love'. ( )

As Bush’s deux ex machina foreign policy careens off into the ditch of history, James Meek comes with this vision of Afghanistan and Iraq. British journalist (and would be novelist) Adam Kellas covers the wars (first Afghanistan and later, Iraq) with a uneasy feeling that by his very presence, he’s somehow a part of the effort. The discipline of dispassionate observation and resolve that the reporter is supposed to represent, mirrors in an uncanny way the distance and aseptic way in which the West wishes to wage war on the Third World.

Funny…on the news tonight..I emphasize the news, there was NBC war correspondent Richard Engel - who I generally like - given the opportunity to plug his book about his five years in Iraq. Odd juxtaposition as I was settling down to read the last 50 pages of Meek’s book.

But it just doesn’t work that way. Hands get dirty. Lives - beyond the proclamation of victory - get abused and lost. Sacrificed, we call it. So there’s the grand scheme. As an outline, I dig it. In execution, something is lost. Which is not to say that Meek cannot or does not write a great sentence. It’s just that too many of them get away from him. A number of times I appreciated the art of a sentence, and upon backtracking to read again, wondered….really…just what it meant. The there was sometimes not there.

Novelist Meek has also spent time as a war correspondent, so he comes at all this from a perspective of experience. All that shows, from the scenes of covering the wars, to Kellas’ working with his publishers - the constant internal argument on art vs commerce. There are many details here that can only have come from actual experiences. It makes for good reading.

The other night, I was listening to some discussion of Bush’s deep longing to make his mark as a war leader for the sake of posterity. I was reminded of how true that sounded with this remarkable passage toward the end of Meek’s ambitious but flawed book.

An unnecessary war where the only victims were volunteers or foreigners was the last luxury of a society that could not accept it had more money than it knew how to console itself with. It was an attempt to buy seriousness with other people’s blood; to taste the words of high tragedy in your mouth, and savour your own doom and hubris, yet skip aside at the last minute and let a spear-carrier take the knife your flaws had summoned for you. ( )