Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Twenty Years: Hope, War, and the Betrayal of an Afghan Generation

Twenty Years: Hope, War, and the Betrayal of an Afghan Generation

Rasmussen, Sune Engel

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralAfghan War (2001-2021)General Political Science

Publisher Price: $30.00

ISBN10: 0374609942
ISBN13: 9780374609948
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: Aug 6 2024
Pages: 352
Weight: 1.18
Height: 1.13 Width: 6.35 Depth: 9.24
Language: English

Winner of the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan book award

One of the Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024
An Economist Best Book of the Year An Air Mail editor's pick

Rasmussen combines social history with rigorous reporting . . . His ability to delve into [his characters'] lives lends his book the feeling of a novel . . . Trenchant . . . Superlative. --Martha Anne Toll, The Washington Post

Devastating . . . Impressive . . . Haunting. --Suzy Hansen, The New York Review of Books

An intimate history of the Afghan war--and the young Afghans whose dreams it enabled and dashed.

No country was more deeply affected by 9/11 than Afghanistan: an entire generation grew up amid the upheaval that began that day. Young Afghans knew the promise of freedom, democracy, and safety, fought with each other over its meaning--and then witnessed its collapse. In Twenty Years, the Wall Street Journal correspondent Sune Engel Rasmussen draws on more than a decade of reporting from the country to tell Afghanistan's story from a new angle. Through the eyes of newly empowered women, skilled entrepreneurs, driven insurgents, and abandoned Western allies, we see the United States and its partners bring new freedoms and wealth, only to preside over the corruption, war-lordism, and social division that led to the Taliban's return to power.

Rasmussen relates this history via two main characters: Zahra, who returns from abroad with high hopes for her liberated county, where she must fight to escape a brutal marriage and rebuild her life; and Omari, who joins the Taliban to protect the honor of his village and country and winds up wrestling with doubt and the trauma of war after achieving victory. We also meet Parasto, who risks her life running clandestine girls' schools under the new Taliban regime, and Fahim, a rags-to-riches tycoon who is forced to flee. With intimate access to these and other characters, Rasmussen offers deep insight into a country betrayed by the West and Taliban alike.

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