Farewell Kabul

From the award-winning co-author of I Am Malala, this book asks just how the might of NATO, with 48 countries and 140,000 troops on the ground, failed to defeat a group of religious students and farmers? How did the West’s war in Afghanistan and across the Middle East go so wrong?

Farewell Kabul tells how the West turned success into defeat in the longest war fought by the United States in its history and by Britain since the Hundred Years War. It is the story of well-intentioned men and women going into a place they did not understand at all. And how, what had once been the right thing to do had become a conflict that everyone wanted to exit. It has been a fiasco which has left Afghanistan still one of the poorest and most dangerous nations on earth.

The leading journalist on the region with unparalleled access to all key decision makers, Christina Lamb is the best-selling author of ‘The Africa House’ and I Am Malala, co-authored with Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. This revelatory and personal account is her final analysis of the realities of Afghanistan, told unlike anyone before.

Reviews

‘As a personal account of this sad, twisted story, Lamb's book is unlikely to be surpassed; gracious and humane, she always gives a fair hearing, while her observation is always needle sharp. It is one of the most rewarding and thought-provoking books by any journalist of my acquaintance’ Evening Standard

‘This is a journey through more than a decade of hell and futility, written vividly, with emotion but mercifully shorn of polemic … in this most captivating of war journals’ Observer

‘A spellbinding synthesis of analysis and highly personal reportage … Lamb's grasp of the back story enables her to weave illuminating historical context into the narrative’ Independent

‘She records with a clear eye and a longer perspective her successive encounters with the Afghans and their occupiers …she writes with sympathy and understanding … For anyone who wants to understand how Britain's road to Helmand was paved with well-meant but ill-founded intentions this magisterial memoir is the book to read and enjoy’ The Times

‘A brave and exceptional book … if you had to recommend one book on Afghanistan then ‘Farewell Kabul’ should be it" Daily Telegraph

‘Lamb's account is an ambitious mix of analysis and anecdote’ James Rubin, Sunday Times

‘Authoritative, wide-ranging and thoroughly readable, Lamb's knowledge and understanding of the region and its central players are impressively profound … Highly recommended’ Literary Review

‘A very good book … that sits with distinction in a growing library about where we – both Afghans and the international community – went wrong … Lamb has a forensic understanding of how things work and why they don’t. ‘Farewell Kabul’ is an impassioned, at moments anguished, love letter to Afghanistan’ New Statesman