The Afghan Campaign: A Novel [Paperback]

In 1981's "Excalibur," director John Boorman warns us through Merlin: "For it is the doom of men that they forget."

Not so Steven Pressfield, who repeatedly holds up the past as a mirror to our present--and never more devastatingly than in his latest and most brilliant novel, "The Afghan Campaign."

Matthias, a young Greek seeking glory and opportunity, signs up with the army of Alexander the Great. But the Persian Empire has fallen, and the days of conventional, set-piece battles where everyone can instantly tell friend from foe are over.

Alexander next plans to conquer India, but first he must pacify its gateway--Afghanistan. It is here, for the first time, that the Macedonians meet an enemy unlike any other. "Here the foe does not meet us in pitched battle," warns Alexander. "Even when we defeat him, he will no accept our dominion. He comes back again and again. He hates us with a passion whose depth is exceeded only by his patience and his capacity for suffering."

Matthias learns this early. In his first raid on an Afghan village, he's ordered to execute a helpless prisoner. When he refuses, he's brutalized until he strikes out with his sword--and then botches the job. But, soon, exposed to an unending series of atrocities--committed by himself and his comrades, as well as the enemy--he finds himself transformed.

It is not a transformation he expected--or relishes. He agonizes over the gap between the ideals he meant to embrace when he became a soldier--and the brutalities that have drained him of everything but a grim determination to survive at any cost.

Pressfield, a former Marine himself, repeatedly contrasts how noncombatants see war as a kind of "glorious" child's-play with how those who must fight it actually experience it. He creates an extraordinary exchange between Costas, an ancient-world version of a CNN war correspondent, and Lucas, a soldier whose morality is outraged at how Costas and his ilk routinely prettify the indescribable. It's a scene that could be lifted (though it isn't) straight from "Full Metal Jacket," where an editor for "Stars and Stripes" orders his correspondents to play up the upcoming visit of Ann-Margaret, while ignoring stories on American and South Vietnamese blunders and defeats.

And we know the truth of this exchange immediately. For we know there are doubtless brutalities inflicted by our troops on the enemy--and atrocities inflicted by the enemy upon our soldiers--that never make the headlines, let alone the TV cameras. We know, though we don't wish to admit, that, decades from now, thousands of these men will carry horrific memories to their graves. These memories will remain sealed from public view, allowing their fellow but unblooded Americans to sleep peacefully, unaware of the price that others have paid on their behalf.

Like the Macedonians (who call themselves "Macks"), our own soldiers find themselves serving in an all-but-forgotten land among a populace whose values could not be more alien from our own if they came from Mars. Instincitvely, they turn to one another--not only for physical security but to preserve their last vestiges of humanity. Pressfield is never more eloquent than when he puts into the words of his war-weary veteran, Lucas, the following:

"Never tell anyone except your mates. Only you don't need to tell them. They know. They know you. Better than a man knows his wife, better than he knows himself. They're bound to you and you to them, like wolves in a pack. It's not you and them. You are them. The unit is indivisible. One dies, we all die." Put conversely: One lives, we all live.

Pressfield has reached into the past to reveal fundamental truths about the present that most of us could probably not accept if contained in a modern-day memoir. These truths take on an immediate poignancy owing to our currently being at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But they will remain just as relevant decades from now, when our young soldiers of today are old and retired.

This book could be--and has been--described as a sequel to Pressfield's "The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great," which appeared in 2004. But it isn't. It is, in fact, its polar-opposite.

"Virtues" showcased the brilliant and luminous (if increasingly dark and explosive) personality of Alexander the Great, whose soaring rhetoric inspired men to hurl themselves into countless battles on his behalf. But "Afghan" thrusts us directly into the flesh-and-blood horrors created by that rhetoric: The horrors of men traumatized by an often unseen and always menacing enemy, and the horrors they must inflict in return if they are to survive in a hostile and alien world.

Though Pressfield draws many intriguing and insightful connections from Alexander's Afghan war to conflicts in the region at present, the parallels are not what makes the book the masterpiece it is. Indeed, it is merely a patch in the great mosaic he has created for the reader; one must not overlook the other outstanding qualities inherent in the characters and the myriad emotions and trials they go through. For the book is about many things. It is that ageless story of an innocent transformed into a heartless instrument of war, of forbidden love, and of friendship bolstered by blood. Romance, war, horror, and tragedy. The reader will find all of these in "The Afghan Campaign."

The book follows a young Macedonian youth named Matthias, who enlists as a mercenary in Alexander's army as it leaves the glories and supreme wealth of Persia. Matthias and his lifelong friend, Lucas, are eager to join up with relatives already in service and to partake in the triumphs of conquest. Yet, in Afghanistan, the foe will not fight a conventional battle. Using guerilla tactics and unspeakable acts of torture, the various tribes of the region, under the command of Spitamenes (who manages to outwit even Alexander), lure the undefeated army into a hellish conflict. Falling in with a group of hardened veterans (each one a memorable and intriguing character), Matthias and Lucas struggle to stay alive, safeguard their friends, and salvage what little bit of humanity they can out of a war where massacre and apathy are the norm.

The best attribute of the book is the sense of realism. Pressfield tosses you a half-pike and sends you into the unforgiving mountains of tribal Afghanistan. Not one detail, however unthinkable or disgusting, is left out, giving the reader a true idea of what war, in any time period, is like. You feel the grit and taste the blood. From the nausea of slashing the throat of a bound, pleading, and possibly innocent captive to the stench of a battlefield covered in horse excrement, the book will, in effect, make the reader a witness to war. Pressfield has obviously taken ample time to thoroughly research all pertaining subject matters.

For those who have read a Pressfield book before, there is no reason you should waste time reading this review. The author has served up another classic akin to Gates of Fire. For others, I cannot even put down on paper the emotions I experienced whilst reading this brilliant piece of historical fiction. Whether you are looking for a great, complex, and informative read or want to learn more about the problems going on in the Middle East now and throughout history, this is your book.

Steven Pressfield transports readers to another time and place like no author I've read since James Clavell's Shogun. Having read each of his previous novels, I've been anxiously waiting for "The Afghan Campaign." It's exceeded my every expectation. He puts flesh and bone on the historical skeleton of Alexander's campaigns, then fills the veins with blood. If you want to understand why Afghanistan became a graveyard for the Soviet army, or gain a whole new level of sympathy and respect for American troops serving there now, read this book. And if you're a writer or a would-be writer, watch how this master of the craft makes a foreign landscape become so real that you can almost remember having been there yourself.

One warning: if you do pick up "The Afghan Campaign,: you might also want to get some Visine, because once you start reading, it's probably going to be the middle of the night before you finally put it down.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 83 reviews  3.9 out of 5 stars