The Warlord's Son

Rating:
Summary: A timely masterpiece
Review: Dan Fesperman has written two superb novels concerning war torn Yugoslavia from two different perspectives of time. They were, in essence, detective novels. Yet, they revealed a writer with enormous gifts-one who could create astoundingly realistic and sympathetic characters and place them in a setting few in the western hemisphere have ventured during wartime. They depict an unforgettable hell where residents cower in fear and just traveling to the market could end a life by a stray bullet from a distant sniper. Dan Fesperman has not been ignored, however. The Crime Writers Association of Great Britain have honored both books. LIE IN THE DARK won the Creasey Award for best first crime novel and THE SMALL BOAT OF GREAT SORROWS won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller. Now he returns in by far and away his best work to date. In a sense it is sweeping in grandeur like DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, yet intimate enough to be reminiscent of a Graham Greene and as a thriller intelligent enough to be in the same ranks of John LeCarre. However, I predict Dan Fesperman will ultimately equal them in fame writing his own type of stylistic war novels. This one is a masterpiece.
American journalist, Stanford J. Kelly AKA Skelly, is ready to try one more time to bring home the big story. He has covered all the major hotspots of the last twenty years and now, just after 9/11, he travels to Pakistan in an effort to enter Afghanistan with an exiled warlord trying to reclaim power. In order to succeed, however, he needs a "fixer" or translator not only of the language but of the culture, the people and the landscape. The individual he hires is Najeeb, educated at an American University but due to a betrayal is a pariah to his family. Najeeb wants only to emigrate to the US with Daliya, his girlfriend, but the door appears to be shutting tight. In spite of these personal problems, Najeeb wants to do a good job for Skelly but protecting him gets more and more difficult the deeper he ventures into the wilds of Afghanistan.
To understand the complex cultures of this untamed part of the world, a reader would be hard pressed to find a book that so immerses the reader fully into this repressed society. It is a scary place- both unyielding and difficult for a westerner to comprehend. It is easy to see why Bin Laden has not yet been found. It should be required reading for students of modern American History and for anyone who wants to appear informed about culture in this untamed part of the world. All of Dan Fesperman's talents of realistic characters, forbidding landscapes and portrayals of distant wars are in full evidence here. Once a reader is brought into the hot dusty realm of the story of these brave souls, it will be hard to let go. Easily the best novel of the year thus far.

Rating:
Summary: Powerfully engaging
Review: The Warlord's Son is a highly enjoyable suspense tale set in Pakistan and Afghanistan just after 9/11. Stan Kelly, called Skelly, is an American war correspondent past his prime who has taken one last assignment in an attempt to write the ONE BIG STORY of his career. He hires a "fixer" -- the local person who knows the ins and outs of the culture and can also serve as translator -- called Najeeb, the title character, who is the black sheep son of a Pashtun warlord. Between Skelly and Najeeb they find themselves in a labyrinth of plots and sub-plots, all revolving around who will control Afghanistan.

Skelly wants the story. For Najeeb, things are more complicated. While both characters are very well drawn, Najeeb is of particular interest in that he is trapped between the world of his childhood in the wild Tribal Areas of Pakistan and the world of his young adult life, which includes college in the U.S. and a relationship with a Muslim woman who is struggling to find a place in society where she can be both faithful to her religion and to her aspiration to be self-directed.

The book feels very authentic in terms of plot, character development and setting, with an evocative sense of place that helped me better appreciate the connections that people have to their ancestral lands. Dan Fesperman is very good at illustrating the complexities of the social and political situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. At one point as I was reading along, I was struck by the realization of just how little we Americans understand the terms of life in that part of the world, and how we probably never will get a real clue. It is very far away indeed from places most of us comprehend.

That's not to say that I didn't empathize with the novel's characters; on the contrary I did. Fesperman is exceptionally talented at helping his characters convey the human emotions we all share, and at challenging his readers to inspect once again the opinions we have formed in the wake of 9/11 and subsequent events. Plus, The Warlord's Son works as a first-rate adventure story.

I have not so thoroughly enjoyed a novel since reading The Kite Runner a few months ago and highly recommend The Warlord's Son to anyone who likes good stories that make you question your assumptions, and your privledge.