Four Novels With Afghan Characters or Themes

Fictional Accounts About Afghanistan and Its People

Jun 27, 2009

Fictional accounts with Afghan characters or settings are relatively hard to find. Here are four novels to read from the safety of your armchair.

Included in the following novels are a 19th century British military adventurer, an Afghan sportsman who has a troubled son, a 20th century American girl who runs away to Afghanistan to fall in love and a KGB spy during the Russian Invasion of 1979. These novels open a window to the fascinating land called Afghanistan.

This is the story of an Afghan named Tursen, an aging Buzkashi master player, and his son Uraz. The father-son relationship is full of tension, rivalry and hostility when the chapandaz becomes disappointed in Uraz’s life choices. Uraz is “haughty and fame-hungry”, according to Booklist, and tries to ride his father’s best horse across the mountains. This novel was made into a movie starring Omar Sharif in 1971.

This is the first book in the author’s Flashman series of novels, which are in turn based on another. Fraser’s book takes a character from Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes and builds an entire series around him. In this initial novel, the hero is sent to “the worst frontier of the British empire at that time, Afghanistan”, according to New Statesman. His adventures include the retreat from Kabul, Last Stand at Gandamak and the Siege of Jalalabad in the First Anglo-Afghan War.

The heroine in this novel is an American girl named Ellen Jasper. She becomes bored with her life and travels to Afghanistan where she meets and falls in love with the dashing Nazrullah. Her worried parents send Mark Miller of the U.S. Embassy to retrieve her, and he falls for a nomad Afghan chieftain’s daughter. Ellen’s “fall into sensuality” and Mark’s adventures in finding her are the basis for the plot.

Best Sellers described this novel as “a fine adventure filled with passion, violence, and tension” It tells the story of Jean-Pierre Debout, a doctor who volunteers to take care of the wounded in the Valley of Five Lions. Jean-Pierre’s wife Jane is newly pregnant and serves as his helper and contact with the women of the village. But Jean-Pierre is really a KGB operative who is spying on the rebels. When Ellis Thaler, a “CIA expert in explosives, arrives to consolidate the rebel’s efforts, that he and Jane had been lovers complicates the situation”. Soon Ellis, Jane, and her infant daughter are fleeing for their lives through treacherous mountain terrain, closely pursued by Russian patrols. – Library Journal.

From treacherous mountains to frightened villagers, from equestrian battles to Afghan politics and from the 19th century to the present, that mysterious and frightening land called Afghanistan offers an abundance of natural resources, characters and story lines for novelists.

The copyright of the article Four Novels With Afghan Characters or Themes in Modern American Fiction is owned by Marie Brannon. Permission to republish Four Novels With Afghan Characters or Themes in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.