Customer Reviews

The Afghan Campaign: A novel

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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.

Weaving fiction around historical fact, Stephen Pressfield, has written a novel based on Alexander the Great's 3 year campaign (from 330 BC) to conquer Afghanistan.

We experience the campaign through the eyes of Matthias, one of the Macedonian infantry who forms part of Alexander's army. This is a different kind of war - proud warrior tribes who are willing to die for their cause and do not recognise the same rules of warfare as their invaders. Mr Pressfield brings these distant times to life: the sights, suffering, smells, despairs and occasional triumphs. The descriptions of life on campaign contrast the best and worst of human behaviour. His vignettes of Alexander reinforce the charismatic nature of Alexander's leadership and reinforce why he earned the designation `Great'.

Reading this novel, with its pain, heartbreak, triumph and failure, it is difficult not to draw parallels with more recent, and even current, wars.

I would recommend this novel to those who like fiction set in this period and who are interested in the life and times of Alexander the Great. I'd also recommend this novel to those who seek some historical perspective on Afghanistan.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Steven Pressfield is on the short list of great historical fiction authors, and maybe just plain authors. His novels of ancient Greece ("Gates of Fire," "Tides of War," "Last of the Amazons," and "The Virtues of War") reimagine an ancient Greece filled with poetry, nobility, sorrow, valor, and, perhaps greatest of all, crystallizing insight into the human condition.

"The Afghan Campaign" is an excellent addition to Pressfield's stellar bibliography. Timely, impeccably researched, and riveting, this is one of those "unputdownable" books.

This is Pressfield's second novel about the campaigns of Alexander the Great, following "The Virtues of War." But, unlike "Virtues, where Pressfield put himself inside the head of Alexander himself, "Afghan Campaign" is narrated by Matthias, lowly ranker in the Macedonian army. This is a plus, since Pressfield's protagonist is a wholly fictional character and we don't have to worry about whether he's "getting Alexander right" on every page.

Matthias is also a wonderful character in his own right, and speaks with a straightforward soldier's jargon that is surprisingly charming. Those charms are among the few in the book, however, as the novel explores the clash of cultures between Greece (and, by implication, Western civilization) and the various tribes and clans of Afghanistan. The "Mack" soldiers are repeatedly shocked, horrified, and traumatized by the brutality of the people they have come to "civilize." Several times I had to put down the book for a few minutes to absorb the shock of what I had just read . . . testament to Pressfield's magnificent prose.

"The Afghan Campaign" focuses on a small band of soldiers in the larger war, and Pressfield gets several chances to show the scars - both emotional and physical - that are left on them all. By the end of the novel, our favorite characters have been through the wringer, and so have we. Fortunately, for all the horrifying deeds done by both sides, Pressfield neither demonizes nor idolizes either Greek or Afghani (both sides can be maddening at times), and this balance seems just about right.

Required reading for fans of ancient Greece as well as those who want a taste of a part of the world we tend to ignore but need to understand.

What I initially felt to be a somewhat flat and simple military story comes together in the end to elevate this book to one the most stirring I have read in a long time.

The author takes you through brilliant battle scenes and on gritty desert marches and deadly mountain terrain in a gratifyingly realistic manner. There is not much character building - actually it is almost completely lacking - making the book read more like a soldier's personal journal.

But, aside from the glorious cavalry and infantry charges, what really left me breathless was how a seemingly insignificant story thread ties it all together in the end. Despite its lack of real character building, it moved me and left me with a empty but awed "wow".

Although I have been shopping on amazon.com since the latter half of the 90s, this is my first review ever. Let this be the measure of my recommendation.

With "The Afghan Campaign", Steven Pressfield has succeeded in extending Alexander the Great's conquests beyond the golden man himself and into the minds of the men who fought for him. The book is not so much about the tactics of war as it is about the grittiness and harsh decisions that must be born by the soldiers who fight the war. Pressfield's characters are not prepared for the vulgarity and madness demanded by war and so rationalize their descents toward ruthlessness step by step in order to maintain their sanity: they make liaisons and accommodations with their foe, looking the other way at the obvious contradictions they face.

Brilliant tactics work brilliantly in pitched battle, but in the face of an entrenched guerilla resistance, colorful battlefield heroism must yield to cold ruthlessness and rage. Some reviewers have commented that there is an excess of moralizing in this book; that it is being used to highlight the conflict going on in Afghanistan today. I disagree. In 300+ B.C.E., rationality and logic were long established in Greece, becoming the defining character of Western thought. This thought collided with the East then as it does now. Alexander struggled against the guerilla tactics of the various Afghan tribes, had to make ruthless war on the native population in order to subdue them, and then make accommodations to hold them reasonably passive. The present Afghan conflict originated and has proceeded much differently.

The reader does not have to be knowledgeable of Alexander the Great or ancient history in order to enjoy this book. "The Afghan Campaign" is simply a good story, fast-paced and well-written, with interesting characters who are forced to recognize that war is hell and then deal with this realization as best they can.

I really liked Gates of Fire. Not quite as big a fan of this one. It had strong moments, and I learned a lot about Afghan history- fun fact- the name Kandahar derives from Iskander, a Central Asian "hossum jossum" for Alexander himself.

Pressfield is the king of landscape. You'll understand the battlespace in Afghanistan. The Pushtunwali, Tora Bora, Bagram air base, Mazar-i-sharif, the Panjshir Valley- if these words caught your imagination over the past few years, then you'll find lots of very good plums in a somewhat dissatisfying pudding. Why dissatisfying? Lots of moral relativism focussed around the pseudo-Bin-Laden character Spiramentes, and in plenty of Matthias' ruminations on religion, culture, warfare, etc. I understand that we need to connect with a modern audience, but he thinks so much like the legions of 21st century post-modern, I-don't-believe-in-anything writers and pundits that its hard sustaining the disbelief to stay in the past. The attempts to draw past-present parallels were unpleasant and tendentious at times. Its hard to do Alexander justice in this sort of grunt's-eye-view narrative, but I felt like I knew no more about him having read the book. Strange omission considering the title. The author manfully tries to create a real-feeling military patois, but it jarred at times. In interviews, Pressfield has said he prefers to write about pre-Western, pre-Christian settings, but the whiff of good old 21st century left-liberalism kept jolting me out of the pages, like an Oldsmobile accidentally parked in the background during a scene in "Gladiator" or something. (The irony is that left-liberalism is a uniquely Western, Christian heresy- or rather a perverted, cannibalistic form of these unique cultural strains) In sum, too much effort trying to connect past and present in fashionable ways left him stuck between two stools at times.

Actually, this is the same flaw that seems endemic in our chattering classes- it put me off Phillipa Gregory, amongst others. Fashionable views sucker you in as a sort of status symbol. All who desire entrance to the "club" must wear them, or at least mouth them, like a sort of badge. Maybe this happens when writers get successful- too much to lose?

Taking his works as a whole, though, the man can write.

Pressfield has made a name for himself with a very impressive body of work describing the wars of Classical Greece. Beginning with the Battle of Thermopylae (The Gates of Fire), moving to the Athenian Empire (The Tides of War) and then the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon (The Virtues of War), Pressfield has been able to capture the classical mind in all of its logic and reason set against the backdrop of the most visceral and anarchic descriptions of war this side of the opening 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. His work is excellent; his scholarship impeccable. One of the inspiring things about Pressfield's corpus is his ability to create bestselling work out of so arcane a subject as the classical world. War novels have always sold moderately well but there is no shortage of them on the bookshelves; to carve oneself a place on these crowded shelves is no small feat. To do so with works that are steeped and infused with classical language and philosophy is even more impressive. That they are bestsellers... not only is this a testament to the skill of Pressfield but gives us hope for the literate public when seeing authors like Dan Brown and Michael Crichton on the bestseller lists.

This is one of the finest novels of war we have ever read. Our highest praise is to compare it to Sharra's The Killer Angels (American civil war novel of Picket's Charge). Are there any flaws in this book? In some measure, we feel like Pressfield didn't quite take the time necessary to fully develop the emotional aspects. The pacing of the novel is peculiar: many years of struggles where we get fine detail over some events yet find the book abbreviated somehow... and we miss the full impact of the war that Matthias feels. Perhaps he was restricted by length of publication. Perhaps he was rushed to get it on the shelves while the controversial War in Iraq still raged (little to fear there since, as of this writing, it shows no sign of abatement). It is not quite the miraculous book that those greatest novels are. Still, it is a great novel. Far, far superior to the great rash of Vietnam War books that populate the shelves... and a great deal more enlightening.

READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT INCHOATUS.COM

Steven Pressfield's latest effort, The Afghan Campaign, is a lightning-fast, energetic read but just not very compelling. This is probably the shortest of Pressfield's books, which is not at all a bad thing--his pacing has consistently improved and The Afghan Campaign is a quick, taut war story that moves at just the right speed all the time. I was never bored with this book.

The plot is fairly straightforward: Matthias, an 18-year old Macedonian boy, joins the army and is arrives in Alexander the Great's army just in time for the beginning of the Afghan campaign, the harshest and most wearying of Alexander's military endeavors. The novel is essentially a Bildungsroman--the story of a young man's growth and maturation from boyhood to manhood. This is exactly what happens: throughout the story, Matthias grows and hardens into the man he is at the end of the campaign--though whether for good or bad is up to the reader to decide.

The story is pretty harrowing. Pressfield follows Kurt Vonnegut's advice to "make awful things happen to" his characters "in order that the reader may see what they are made of," and it works, even if it isn't always pleasant to read about. The ending, in particular, will determine whether or not you like the book as a whole.

The book moves very quickly. It's right at 350 pages long, the print is unusually large, and the chapters are almost all under five or six pages long. I'm a slow reader, and I finished it off in a total of probably six hours of reading time. Like I said, Pressfield's pacing here is great. The plot never bogs down, and really picks up good speed and tension at the end.

Unfortunately, the brisk pace meant some sacrifice, and in this case it was in the character category. Matthias's friends are all rough sketches--you get enough detail to identify who's who, but beyond one or two of Matthias's closest friends the characters never really shine. It's not a fatal flaw, but it is a shame, because Pressfield has shown in the past--especially in Gates of Fire--that he can create incredibly realistic and interesting characters. The end result is that I almost had a detached point of view while reading the story--I didn't really feel involved in what was happening to the characters in the intense way that I should have.

The historical detail is good, and Pressfield adds his own invented slang to give some impression of what life is like with soldiers any time, anywhere. His efforts worked well--the daily life of a Macedonian soldier was very well-drawn.

All in all, The Afghan Campaign was a good book. It's certainly not the best historical novel available, nor is it Pressfield's best work, but it's worth reading.

Recommended.