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Games Without Rules

The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan

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Games Without Rules

By: Tamim Ansary
Narrated by: Tamim Ansary
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About this listen

Today, most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real, but it sits atop an older struggle between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan - a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam.

Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out and to illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood. It is the story of a nation struggling to take form, a nation undermined by its own demons while every 40 to 60 years a great power disrupts whatever progress has been made. Related in storytelling style, Games Without Rules provides revelatory insight into a country at the center of political debate.

Tamim Ansary is the award-winning author of Destiny Disrupted and West of Kabul, East of New York. He has been a major contributing writer to several secondary-school history textbooks offering an Islamic perspective.

©2012 Tamim Ansary (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc Asia Middle East Turkey World War

Critic Reviews

"A breezy, accessible overview of centuries of messy Afghan history, including the present military quagmire…. Lively instruction on how Afghanistan has coped, and continues to cope, with being a strategic flash point." ( Kirkus Reviews)
"In Games Without Rules, Tamim Ansary has written the most engaging, accessible and insightful history of Afghanistan. With gifted prose and revealing details, Ansary gives us the oft-neglected Afghan perspective of the wars, foreign meddling, and palace intrigue that has defined the past few centuries between the Indus and Oxus. This brilliant book should be required reading for anyone involved in the current war there - and anyone who wants to understand why Afghanistan will not be at peace anytime soon." (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of Little America: The War within the War for Afghanistan)

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Profile Image for Suzannah

Outstanding

Outstanding, funny, riveting, and ultimately hopeful. Doesn't cover the 19th century in much detail, but really gets good once we get to the 20th. For more on 19th century Afghanistan, try William Dalrymple's RETURN OF A KING.

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Profile Image for Daniel Smyth

Afghanistan explained by an Afghan

If you want to begin to understand Afghanistan listen to this book beautifully read by the author.

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A must read on Afghanistan

Ansary’s is a natural story teller, he lays out a very balanced overview of the long history of Afghanistan here. He wanders off into commentary more towards the end but it’s still a book very much worth reading on Afghanistan

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