Kara Kush Hardcover - 2002

by Idries Shah

A riveting and fast-paced novel in which "Kara Kush"-or "The Eagle," as the Afghan-born, American-schooled, Adam Durany becomes known-returns to his homeland to lead his people against the Soviet atrocities and communist infiltration that threaten to annihilate his country and its dreams of modernization. Adam, convinced that a resistance movement is imperative, rallies his followers, the ill-equipped patriots, to fight back.

Idries Shah, the author of this gripping story, is the best-known Afghan writer of our time. His books on Sufism, philosophy, history, and travel, are known the world over. Shah was the descendant of a thousand-year-old Afghan family, and an author and teacher who found success explaining the East to the West. Kara Kush, first published in 1986, is his only novel: a fascinating adventure in which a gifted writer set out to inform the world about Afghan society, history, and culture. According to interviews with Shah, the novel is based on fact and eyewitness accounts.

Kara Kush is, above all, great storytelling-Doris Lessing called it "the best war novel I have read . . . As exciting as Shogun"-but Shah also provides readers with a remarkable degree of insight into the country of Afghanistan and its people. As The Washington Times stated, "what sets this novel apart are the Afghans themselves. The reader is brought into contact with a people, a history and traditions peculiarly remote from the conventions of popular fiction."