Review
Praise for The Taliban Shuffle
“What’s remarkable about _The Taliban Shuffle_ is that its author, Kim Barker, has written an account of her experiences covering Afghanistan and Pakistan that manages to be hilarious and harrowing, witty and illuminating, all at the same time... Ms. Barker has discovered a voice in these pages that enables her to capture both the serious and the seriously absurd conditions in Af-Pak (Afghanistan and Pakistan), and the surreal deal of being a female reporter there, with dating problems ranging from the screwball (a boyfriend competing to cover the same story) to the ridiculous (being romantically pursued by the former prime minister of Pakistan). Black humor, it turns out, is a perfect tool for capturing the sad-awful-frequently-insane incongruities of war. The Taliban Shuffle, in fact, reads like a rollicking and revealing mashup of Imperial Life in the Emerald City (Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s devastating 2006 portrait of the unreal world of Iraq’s Green Zone), War Reporting for Cowards (Chris Ayres’s entertaining 2005 account of being a newbie war reporter for The Times of London) and Robert Altman’s darkly satiric 1970 movie MASH, with a bit of Evelyn Waugh-esque satiric verve thrown in for good measure.”
—Michiko Kakutani, **_**The New York Times
*“*The Taliban Shuffle_ is part war memoir, part tale of self-discovery that, thanks to Barker's biting honesty and wry wit, manages to be both hilarious and heartbreaking.”
—The Chicago Tribune
"Brilliant, tender, and unexpectedly hilarious."
_ —Marie Claire
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"[An] immensely entertaining memoir."
—_The Boston Globe
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“Irresistib...
Product Description
A true-life Catch-22 set in the deeply dysfunctional countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, by one of the region’s longest-serving correspondents.
Kim Barker is not your typical, impassive foreign correspondent—she is candid, self-deprecating, laugh-out-loud funny. At first an awkward newbie in Afghanistan, she grows into a wisecracking, seasoned reporter with grave concerns about our ability to win hearts and minds in the region. In The Taliban Shuffle, Barker offers an insider’s account of the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, chronicling the years after America’s initial routing of the Taliban, when we failed to finish the job.
When Barker arrives in Kabul, foreign aid is at a record low, electricity is a pipe dream, and of the few remaining foreign troops, some aren’t allowed out after dark. Meanwhile, in the vacuum left by the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban is regrouping as the Afghan and Pakistani governments flounder. Barker watches Afghan police recruits make a travesty of practice drills and observes the disorienting turnover of diplomatic staff. She is pursued romantically by the former prime minister of Pakistan and sees adrenaline-fueled colleagues disappear into the clutches of the Taliban. And as her love for these hapless countries grows, her hopes for their stability and security fade.
Swift, funny, and wholly original, The Taliban Shuffle unforgettably captures the absurdities and tragedies of life in a war zone.
From the Hardcover edition.