Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban [Hardcover]

Jere Van Dyk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 22, 2010

An American reporter's chilling account of being kidnapped and imprisoned by the Taliban, in the no-man's-land between Afghanistan and Pakistan

Jere Van Dyk was on the wrong side of the border. He and three Afghan guides had crossed into the tribal areas of Pakistan, where no Westerner had ventured for years, hoping to reach the home of a local chieftain by nightfall. But then a dozen armed men in black turbans appeared over the crest of a hill.

Captive is Van Dyk's searing account of his forty-five days in a Taliban prison, and it is gripping and terrifying in the tradition of the best prison literature. The main action takes place in a single room, cut off from the outside world, where Van Dyk feels he can trust nobody—not his jailers, not his guides (who he fears may have betrayed him), and certainly not the charismatic Taliban leader whose fleeting appearances carry the hope of redemption as well as the prospect of immediate, violent death.

Van Dyk went to the tribal areas to investigate the challenges facing America there. His story is of a deeper, more personal challenge, an unforgettable tale of human endurance.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An American journalist exploring the war zone on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border reports unwanted lessons in its perils in this harrowing memoir. Having traveled with the freedom fighters in the '80s, Van Dyk thought he had the connections and knowledge to navigate the tribal lands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but he was captured by a fractious band of Taliban fighters in 2008. Van Dyk (In Afghanistan: An American Odyssey) and his Afghan guides spent 44 days in a dark cell. Well-fed but terrified, he felt a nightmare of helplessness and disorientation. Dependent on a jailer who mixed solicitude with jocular death threats and a ruthless Taliban commander who could free or kill him on a whim, the author performed Muslim prayers in an attempt to appease his captors; wary of murky conspiracies involving his cellmates, he was afraid of everybody, including the children. Van Dyk's claustrophobic narrative jettisons journalistic detachment and views his ordeal through the distorting emotions of fear, shame, and self-pity. But in telling his story this way, he brings us viscerally into the mental universe of the Taliban, where paranoia and fanaticism reign, and survival requires currying favor with powerful men. The result is a gripping tale of endurance and a vivid evocation of Afghanistan's grim realities. 1 map. (June 22)
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Review

“If you want to read an amazing book, check out Captive, by Jere Van Dyk. . . . What this reporter lived through is, I think, pretty much the most frightening thing a journalist could be subjected to. He wrote a phenomenal book about it that I consumed in about a day. Please read it.”--Sebastian Junger, author of War

“Rich and revealing. . . . Offers a rare and complicated portrait of the Taliban mentality seen through discerning Western eyes.”--The Washington Post

“A vivid portrait of a man under stress and pressure, producing the equivalent of war’s high tension and terror. . . . Some of [Van Dyk’s] passages inevitably will become part of the canon.”--The Boston Globe

“A gripping tale of endurance and a vivid evocation of Afghanistan's grim realities.”--Publishers Weekly

“A harrowing survival story.”--Kirkus Reviews

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Times Books; First Edition edition (June 22, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080508827X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805088274
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #666,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jere Van Dyk is the author of In Afghanistan: An American Odyssey, an account of his travels with the mujahideen in the 1980s, during their struggle against the Soviet Union. Since then, he has covered stories all over the world, mainly for The New York Times, CBS News, and National Geographic, which have required him to visit places where few Western reporters had ventured before. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Vivid and Powerful Story of Desperate Times, June 22, 2010

By 

David C. Isby (Alexandria, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban (Hardcover)

I know Afghanistan and the Pakistani borderlands. I've been there many times over the past 30 years and have just written my fourth book (AFGHANISTAN: GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES, published by Pegasus) about that area. So I have encountered Jere Van Dyk, whose expertise goes back many decades, and many of the same people, places and hazards that he did. I can vouch for the accuracy and authenticity of what he has written about. This is all the way it actually is out there. I can also attest to the vivid and compelling way in which he has told his story. This is the real high-stakes world. Unlike the embedded reporters with US and NATO forces, there was no one to call for a rescue helicopter or provide back-up. If anything counts as "extreme reporting" it was what Jere Van Dyk was doing.

The old calypso folk song, "The Sloop John B" has great resonance with anyone that has ever travelled through this part of the world, because of its heartfelt chorus "This is the worst trip I've ever been on". We've all thought we were on that trip on one time or other, but Jere Van Dyk, no fooling, found it. He ended up falling into the hands of some very evil guys and had no idea whether they were going to hack his head off with a blunt dinner knife as they did to Daniel Pearl, sell him to Al Qaeda, or use him to resolve generations of political and religious resentment in even more painful ways. That he not only endured but came through to write this book is a story both of endurance and a demonstration of what is at stake in the conflicts in the region.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The harrowing tale of a Taliban captive, June 30, 2010

By 

N. B. Kennedy (Hopewell, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban (Hardcover)

Captivity narratives are fascinating in the way a train wreck is fascinating. We don't want to look, but we have to look. We are stunned and horrified at what we see. We desperately want to return to the decisive moment when it all could have been averted. Yet we cannot go back.

Jere Van Dyk wanted to return to the Afghanistan he loved as a young man and the Afghanistan he came to know more deeply when he traveled undercover with the mujahideen in the 1980s, reporting on their armed struggle against the Soviet Union. Given his connections, he thought he could report on the Taliban from the fractious tribal borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which no journalist had successfully navigated in years.

Renewing old ties and forging new ones, he makes brief forays across the border, but ultimately he is captured. His first look at his cell hints at what might lie ahead: "I was in a small baked-mud room.... I looked behind me to see if there was any blood on the wall. Was this a torture chamber? I saw black marks and wasn't sure. I saw chains on the dirt floor on my right. They were tied to a steel stake." Was Mr. Van Dyk betrayed? He doesn't know for sure. In fact, there isn't much he can know for sure as he endures the degradations of imprisonment. Most chillingly, he isn't sure he will live.

Mr. Van Dyk doesn't pretend to be brave or heroic or otherworldly spiritual. He writes of his fear, his sickness of body and heart, his shame and his grief. He admits to a fascination with his captors and their Islamic rituals, even their way of life. Yet he also feels the pull of his childhood Christian faith. The nuanced way that he experiences psychological torture and physical deprivations makes this a more engrossing narrative than other captivity stories I've read, such as Buried Alive or Kabul 24.

In the end, Mr. Van Dyk didn't get the story he went after, but he found an even more compelling one. His harrowing personal experience probably tells us more about the Taliban than could have been told from a more removed stance. I deeply regret the soul-rending terror he was forced to endure, but I am grateful as a reader that he could craft such a valuable memoir from it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Incredible Story, August 9, 2010

By 

Wood is Good (Orange County, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban (Hardcover)

This was a fantastic read. Van Dyk creates a vivid account of his imprisonment with the Taliban - his fears and emotions are expressed so realistically, you will believe you are sitting right beside him throughout his journey. The paranoia, the fear, everything he experiences is written so hauntingly real that it is hard to put this book down; you will need to know what happens next.

It's not fair to point out particular scenes of interest, it's the kind of book one must experience for themselves and let the journey evolve as it does.

While he was not able to write the book he came to Afghanistan to write, the story Van Dyk tells is about as intimate a portrayal of the Taliban and Afghan culture as you could ask for. It's terrifying, yet disturbingly fascinating to understand the inner workings of the disjointed group of men who call themselves the Taliban.