A gung-ho yarn of modern war that also clarifies the resilience of Afghanistan’s tribal culture.
Pulpy retelling of a notable Afghan war flash point from the perspective of the Pashtun tribesman who saved wounded Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell.
Prolific author Robinson (Honor and Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Navy SEALs Who Captured the "Butcher of Fallujah"—and the Shameful Ordeal They Later Endured, 2013, etc.) previously co-authored Lone Survivor, made into a 2013 film, about Luttrell’s ordeal. Here, the author re-examines the fierce firefight against numerous Taliban fighters that claimed both Luttrell’s three peers and a helicopter-borne rescue mission via the story of Mohammed Gulab, based on interviews conducted via interpreter. Though the overall narrative is familiar, Robinson develops it via a lesser-known facet of the war: the fiercely independent mountain tribes that tried to avoid both Taliban and American entanglements. Gulab notes at the outset, “God spoke to me that day and said I must give protection to this man...under the Pashtunwali rules that guide our lives.” This decision surprised his village and Luttrell and infuriated the Taliban, resulting in a tense series of standoffs before a covert, high-tech rescue mission arrived for Luttrell and his unlikely protector. Remarkably, it took years for Luttrell, who credits the tribesman with saving his life, to find Gulab again. Robinson tries to rectify that by telling his story, emphasizing Gulab’s bravery, the respect accorded to his family by his tribe, and his credentials as a genuine warrior who started as a child soldier fighting the Soviet occupation—not to mention the fact that Gulab “liked this tall Special Forces operator a great deal more than he cared for the rough, sneering gangsters” of the Taliban. Robinson sincerely discusses the inscrutable, honor-bound, ancient Pashtun society and warrior code that guided Gulab. However, the book suffers from repetitive observation and a sometimes excessively macho tone (“It was as if everyone was involved in this rescue, if not physically, then with their fighting hearts and steel-rimmed willpower”).
A gung-ho yarn of modern war that also clarifies the resilience of Afghanistan’s tribal culture.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1798-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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