Warlords Son [Paperback]

Dan Fesperman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 4, 2005

Skelly - a burned-out American foreign correspondent - is back on the beat. Post 9/11, trailing another messy divorce and too many children, he's been dropped into the smoky chaos of Peshawar after scarcely as much preparation as one might make for a weekend at the beach. And, as Skelly soon discovers, this posting is going to be no picnic. To survive the inflamed passions of Peshawar's swirling humanity he will need a 'fixer': a local man who knows the area and speaks English, a nimble, well-connected jack of all trades who can save his skin yet take him where the action is. And for every journalist in Peshawar, the real action is across the border in Afghanistan, where AlQaeda lurk and armed Taliban fighters still cling to power in their mountain strongholds. Skelly chooses Najeeb, the banished son of a tribal warlord. Soon they are driving dusty roads west in the shadowy wake of ex-Mujahedeen Mahmood Razaq, who, armed with dubious assurances of American backing, hopes to stake his claim as leader of the next regime. Skelly's quest for the scoop of a lifetime is no less grandiose. He is determined to track down the charismatic man the whole world is seeking. But it is Najeeb, torn by his own divided loyalties, who must find the way for both of them, in a land where a single misstep - and a single lapse of trust - can prove fatal.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Dan Fesperson's captivating third novel, The Warlord's Son, begins cinematically with a dusty sunrise in Peshawar, Pakistan, the clamorous calls of competing muezzins, and the buzz of a scooter. In a classic premise worthy of John Le Carre, an aging American war correspondent named Skelly has been sent on what he fears will be--one way or another--his final assignment: the war zone of Afghanistan during the American bombings after 9/11. His ticket into Afghanistan is Najeeb Ajam--an Afghani-born "fixer," a local guide for foreign correspondents, expected to translate the region's languages, arrange passage to difficult areas, and secure introductions to valuable contacts, government clerks, street merchants, warlords. But Ajam is working for higher stakes than his daily cash envelope. His journey with Skelly takes him back to his tribal lands, where he must reckon with the powerful father he left and betrayed years earlier.

Like the works of Graham Greene or Paul Bowles, The Warlord's Son can be read purely for atmosphere, since it beautifully conveys the rigid hierarchies, harsh living conditions, and casual violence of the region. As a thriller, it has some weak points, but Najeem's world is depicted so convincingly that we can allow Fesperson a few liberties with plausibility. --Regina Marler --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Fesperman, author of Small Boat of Great Sorrows, a critically acclaimed espionage thriller set in Bosnia, now turns his sights on war-zone journalism in this chilling, timely novel. Newspaper reporter Skelly (aka Stan Kelly) is a former hotshot war correspondent, now a burned-out hack covering town meetings for a Midwestern daily. Five weeks after 9/11 he is given a chance—his last chance to get back in the game, he believes—to cover the war on terror, the Taliban and Afghanistan. In Peshawar, Skelly hires Najeeb, a bright fixer who speaks English and mountain dialects. What Skelly doesn't realize is that Najeeb is an outcast from his tribal clan and an unwilling informer for the Pakistani secret police; Najeeb is also involved in a dangerous, illicit affair with Daliya, who's being punished by her family for resisting an arranged marriage. Battling the pollution and bureaucratic corruption of Peshawar, Skelly and Najeeb try to find a way into Afghanistan. They finally manage to join a warlord's entourage, but just before they leave, Daliya goes missing. Forging ahead, Skelly and Najeeb develop an enduring friendship, tested by their harrowing journey into Afghanistan. Capture, escape and shocking revelations finally save one man and condemn the other in this gripping portrayal of shameless media frenzy and hopeless geopolitical gamesmanship.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 489 pages
• Publisher: Black Swan (July 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055215024X
• ISBN-13: 978-0552150248
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,694,037 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A timely masterpiece, August 16, 2004

By 

Larry Gandle (Tampa, Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Warlord's Son (Hardcover)

Dan Fesperman has written two superb novels concerning war torn Yugoslavia from two different perspectives of time. They were, in essence, detective novels. Yet, they revealed a writer with enormous gifts-one who could create astoundingly realistic and sympathetic characters and place them in a setting few in the western hemisphere have ventured during wartime. They depict an unforgettable hell where residents cower in fear and just traveling to the market could end a life by a stray bullet from a distant sniper. Dan Fesperman has not been ignored, however. The Crime Writers Association of Great Britain have honored both books. LIE IN THE DARK won the Creasey Award for best first crime novel and THE SMALL BOAT OF GREAT SORROWS won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller. Now he returns in by far and away his best work to date. In a sense it is sweeping in grandeur like DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, yet intimate enough to be reminiscent of a Graham Greene and as a thriller intelligent enough to be in the same ranks of John LeCarre. However, I predict Dan Fesperman will ultimately equal them in fame writing his own type of stylistic war novels. This one is a masterpiece.
American journalist, Stanford J. Kelly AKA Skelly, is ready to try one more time to bring home the big story. He has covered all the major hotspots of the last twenty years and now, just after 9/11, he travels to Pakistan in an effort to enter Afghanistan with an exiled warlord trying to reclaim power. In order to succeed, however, he needs a "fixer" or translator not only of the language but of the culture, the people and the landscape. The individual he hires is Najeeb, educated at an American University but due to a betrayal is a pariah to his family. Najeeb wants only to emigrate to the US with Daliya, his girlfriend, but the door appears to be shutting tight. In spite of these personal problems, Najeeb wants to do a good job for Skelly but protecting him gets more and more difficult the deeper he ventures into the wilds of Afghanistan.
To understand the complex cultures of this untamed part of the world, a reader would be hard pressed to find a book that so immerses the reader fully into this repressed society. It is a scary place- both unyielding and difficult for a westerner to comprehend. It is easy to see why Bin Laden has not yet been found. It should be required reading for students of modern American History and for anyone who wants to appear informed about culture in this untamed part of the world. All of Dan Fesperman's talents of realistic characters, forbidding landscapes and portrayals of distant wars are in full evidence here. Once a reader is brought into the hot dusty realm of the story of these brave souls, it will be hard to let go. Easily the best novel of the year thus far.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerfully engaging, October 26, 2004

By 

B. McEwan "yellokat" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Warlord's Son (Hardcover)

The Warlord's Son is a highly enjoyable suspense tale set in Pakistan and Afghanistan just after 9/11. Stan Kelly, called Skelly, is an American war correspondent past his prime who has taken one last assignment in an attempt to write the ONE BIG STORY of his career. He hires a "fixer" -- the local person who knows the ins and outs of the culture and can also serve as translator -- called Najeeb, the title character, who is the black sheep son of a Pashtun warlord. Between Skelly and Najeeb they find themselves in a labyrinth of plots and sub-plots, all revolving around who will control Afghanistan.

Skelly wants the story. For Najeeb, things are more complicated. While both characters are very well drawn, Najeeb is of particular interest in that he is trapped between the world of his childhood in the wild Tribal Areas of Pakistan and the world of his young adult life, which includes college in the U.S. and a relationship with a Muslim woman who is struggling to find a place in society where she can be both faithful to her religion and to her aspiration to be self-directed.

The book feels very authentic in terms of plot, character development and setting, with an evocative sense of place that helped me better appreciate the connections that people have to their ancestral lands. Dan Fesperman is very good at illustrating the complexities of the social and political situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. At one point as I was reading along, I was struck by the realization of just how little we Americans understand the terms of life in that part of the world, and how we probably never will get a real clue. It is very far away indeed from places most of us comprehend.

That's not to say that I didn't empathize with the novel's characters; on the contrary I did. Fesperman is exceptionally talented at helping his characters convey the human emotions we all share, and at challenging his readers to inspect once again the opinions we have formed in the wake of 9/11 and subsequent events. Plus, The Warlord's Son works as a first-rate adventure story.

I have not so thoroughly enjoyed a novel since reading The Kite Runner a few months ago and highly recommend The Warlord's Son to anyone who likes good stories that make you question your assumptions, and your privledge.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and Scary., March 10, 2005

By 

Martin Stadius (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Warlord's Son (Hardcover)

An amazing novel. As a news and historical junkie, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the situation the USA is now confronted with in Afghanistan. Often, nonfiction books give a pretty good overview of a country or a region. Very occasionally good fiction does better. This book is not better, but the best. From the first page "The Warlord's Son" gets the reader into the grit and grime of the nebulose mountains and passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Skelly, an aging war correspondent, wants to get into Afghanistan in the weeks after 9/11 and enlists the aid of Najeed, a minor warlorld's estranged son. The two barely make it across the border before disaster happens. In a way, the novel is a metaphor of crossing cultural frontiers, with Najeed bound with the ropes of honor and blood, Skelly a determined fool. I won't tell you any more about the the plot. Read it for yourself. Previous reviewers have compared the author, Dan Fesperman, to Graham Greene and John LeCarre, with justice.