The hard road back to India There are few books that can truly be said to be unique, but this is one. Afghanistan has been a battleground since man has occupied its hostile landscape and others have sought to control it as the corridor between great continents. The British-conquerors of the Indian sub-continent-have found themselves fruitlessly bleeding into its dry soil on several occasions. The first was in the mid-nineteenth century as they attempted to secure an unpopular puppet ruler on its throne. Error compounded error as Elphinstone, the British army's incompetent commander, compromised his strategic position in the capital and then, to extricate himself, instigated a forced retreat in winter as hostile tribesmen pressed in on all sides. History knows that this resulted in the annihilation of the entire army. Only a handful of people survived. One of these was Lady Sale, the formidable wife of Robert Sale whose brigade was fighting its own war locked inside Jellalabad. Incredibly Lady Sale kept a daily diary of her experience of the entire appalling catastrophe. It illuminates the events of the retreat uniquely and provides an inspiring view of a woman rising to the demands of extreme adversity that has no parallels.

A Lady Sales' journal of disaster in Afghanistan.

During the 19th century Britain entered into three brutal wars with Afghanistan, each one saw the British trying and failing to gain control of a warlike and impenetrable territory. The first two wars (1839–42 and 1878–81) were wars of the Great Game; the British Empire's attempts to combat growing Russian influence near India's borders. The third, fought in 1919, was an Afghan-declared holy war against British India – in which over 100,000 Afghans answered the call, and raised a force that would prove too great for the British Imperial army. Each of the three wars were plagued by military disasters, lengthy sieges and costly engagements for the British, and history has proved the Afghans a formidable foe and their country unconquerable. This book reveals the history of these three Anglo-Afghan wars, the imperial power struggles that led to conflict and the torturous experiences of the men on the ground. The book concludes with a brief overview of the background to today's conflict in Afghanistan, and sketches the historical parallels.

A riveting and powerful story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship and an indestructible love

Because the Taliban rulers of Kabul, Afghanistan impose strict limitations on women's freedom and behavior, eleven-year-old Parvana must disguise herself as a boy so that her family can survive after her father's arrest.

Afghanistan, 1975: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.