Customer Reviews

Warlord's Son

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

On the face of it, The Warlord's Son has a lot going for it. Fesperman produces well-written prose, with interesting characters and a very strong plot. Unfortunately, it just doesn't quite gel. The pieces are there, it's very readable but I read two other books during the course of this one and never felt that pull to read just a little bit more that this story could have - should have! - had.

The novel is set in the shadowy borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, shortly after 9-11. A has-been reporter, on the road for a last hurrah, meets up with Najeeb, a local "fixer" - a son, we gradually find out, of an important figure in the local tribes. A warlord's son.

Weaving multiple storylines, the main plot revolves around Skelly, the reporter and Najeem on the dangerous path into Afghanistan, led on my promises of meeting the "Arabs" - including Bin Laden. Lurking in the background are various competing tribal factions, the CIA and family members anxious to do harm to or protect our protagonists.

They find a story for the ages ... but at a price.

This is probably worth a read if you are into thrillers. I would have given it 3 1/2 stars if allowed but the pacing just wasn't right for higher.

Dan Fesperman's "The Warlord's Son" is one of the more authentic thrillers on offer set in the Islamic world. This should be unsurprising, since Fesperman is a war correspondent who covered the same conflict (the 2001 war in Afghanistan) as the book does, but far too many other journalists skimp on the accuracy side of the equation.

The plot revolves around war correspondent Stan Kelly (known as Skelly to all and sundry), who has been sent to Pakistan to report on the situation in Afghanistan. Skelly has made his way to a beautifully evoked Peshawar in the hope of crossing the border to Afghanistan, and has enlisted his "fixer", Najeeb Azam, to help in this task. From there, we're treated to an account of Skelly's attempts to cross the border and Najeeb's struggles with his own demons in the Tribal Agencies on the Pakistani-Afghani border.

Despite its very taut plot - and the simply incredible final scenes - the real stars of the show are the setting and the culture, for my money. We spend a lot of time in refugee camps and wandering through the mountains of southern Afghanistan, including some places which might be familiar from the coverage of the war.

Culturally, Fesperman is sensitive to the role Islam plays among the tribal Pashtun as well as to their code of honour known as Pashtunwali. Characters such as Najeeb and Bashir are drawn particularly well, with the reader constantly needing to make gut assessments of their loyalties, exactly as Skelly is having to do on the ground.

Fesperman, who has clearly "been there, done that" in this part of the world, has a real knack of putting the reader in the middle of the action. Again, this is hardly surprising given his journalistic background, but in my experience it puts him among a small group of correspondents.

As previously mentioned, the plot is supremely well-paced. Just as the central characters are, the reader is aware as the novel draws to a close that something big is about to happen and yet when it does, it still took me by surprise. I won't spoil the shock revelations for those who haven't read it, except to say that they are eminently believable by the time the plot reaches them.

While this is definitely one of the better thrillers to emerge in recent years, the lack of a fifth star is due to a creeping feeling that the other American characters are more ciphers for the plot, rather than actual people. This is hardly terminal, but when the Pashtuns and Skelly are so well-written, it's a bit of a shame.

Overall, this is highly recommended to anyone after some high-quality thriller writing and also to anyone with a passing interest in the part of the world in which it is set.

Dan Fesperman is tops when it comes to capturing the atmosphere of the world's hot spots. Through the eyes of the Pakistani, Najeeb, we're exposed to a way of thinking and a way of life which is incredibly foreign to most of us. And he does this convncingly, increasing our understanding of what it is to live in the Pakistani society. This works as a thriller, but it also is an experience which expands one's concept of the world.

This is an exciting adventure of a veteran reporter, Skelly, and his translator, Najeeb, as they venture into the Tribal lands in the Pakistan/Afghan border.

Najeeb is the disgraced son of a warlord, who was driven away from his family. Unknown to him were the machinations of his father and uncle, each using Najeeb to settle some ancient score. Into this midst wanders the newspaper man Skelly, who is just after a good story. He teams up with Najeeb on the story of his lifetime, if only he can survive to tell it! On the way, there are shadowy American oil-men/spies/government agents who Skelly thinks are his friends, as well as half a dozen warlords, revolutionaries, bandits and tribal lords vying for influence. Who can he trust? That is the big question and one that must be calculated correctly to survive.

In the event, the book turns out to be reminiscent of Gerald Seymour, the very best thriller writer of the past thirty years. Mr. Seymour too had a journalist's background that he's put to good service in sketching out the background of various wartorn settings. In Mr. Fesperman's case, his heroes too are journalists. Stanford J. "Skelly" Kelly is nearing the end off his career as a foreign journalist and about to be assigned to some boring domestic desk. Despite a trail of ex-wives and children, he has few real friends or family members who care about him. The opening of the war against the Taliban in late 2001 offers him a shot at one last big story and he snaps it up. But he knows from experience that he needs a guide to this exotic turf and he lucks upon Najeeb, the warlord's son of the title. Raised in a tribal village on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, educated in America, estranged from his father, but forbidden to re-enter the States, Najeeb is stuck between the modern world and the primitive, offering his services in Peshawar. Complicating matters still further is his illicit girlfriend, Daliya, who's run out on an arranged marriage, and the fundamentalist threats he's been receiving about this relationship.

When Skelly and Najeeb get the opportunity to travel into Afghanistan with a minor warlord and his band of fighters, both American and Pakistani intelligence operatives encourage them, respectively, desperate for information about what's going on in no-man's land. Awaiting them are a potential meeting with the fleeing Osama bin Laden and a certain reckoning with the father Najeeb betrayed some years before. Following them are Daliya and the spooks. And as they travel into this forbidding region where there is no authority but arcane tribal custom and the barrel of a Kalashnikov and where back-stabbing is a way of life, the two men can trust no one but each other, and they're pretty much strangers.

Mr. Fesperman does a masterful job of building the tension as his story wends its way into a contemporary heart of darkness. Key to the story is the idea that while Najeeb and Skelly could be not just colleagues but friends in America, there is little hope they'll even survive in a land where their Westernism is despised. Nor is it possible to imagine the abyss they travel into ever becoming modernized and liberalized. The cake of custom is too firmly baked. Indeed, one of Najeeb's handlers makes it quite clear that they don't even bother trying to influence events: "Just about any outcome suits our purposes, as long as I'm kept informed." This then is ultimately a story of the reporters who try to keep us informed about the places where our influence barely reaches and which are, therefore, lethally dangerous. It is also a moving story of the tragic waste of life that characterizes these benighted places.

No matter what you believe about politics, war, and the Middle East, this book will leave you speechless! The author explains things in a great and unique way. He offers an amazing perspective that you never hear from anyone else. The plot has twists and turns that leave you in awe. I couldn't put it down. I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good story that is full of surprises.

"The Warlord's Son" opens in Peshawar, Pakistan, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province and the administrative center for the Federally Administered Tribal Area. The region is only nominally controlled by Pakistan's central government. In reality, it is almost entirely under Pashtun tribal elders' rule. The Pashtuns are the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan. With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Peshawar became the political center for anti-Soviet Mujahideen. Now, in the post 9/11 world, the Mujahideen hate the "Western Infidels." The city is surrounded by huge camps of Afghan refugees. Many of the refugees remained there through the civil war which broke out after the Soviets were defeated. Now, seven years after the demise of Afghanistan's Taliban government and the invasion by American and allied forces, the camps and the politics remain the same. During these tumultuous times, Peshawar has replaced Kabul and Kandahar as the heart of Pashtun culture.

Waziristan, the borderland between Pakistan and Afghanistan, is named after the Pashtun Wazir tribe. Here are bases where terrorists live and groups like al Quaeda are trained and harbored. Supposedly, bin Ladin and "the Arabs" reside here also. Those who dwell in this inhospitable area are known to be fierce warriors and extreme in their religious beliefs. It seems that all males over ten carry Kalashnikovs. Their women are hidden behind closed doors, in purdah. Peshawar and the border tribal areas play a large part in "The Warlord's Son," perhaps as large as the novel's characters themselves.

Stanford J. Kelly, aka Stan Kelly, aka Skelly, is a highly regarded ex-war correspondent who covered the Gulf War, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Disenchanted with life in the suburbs and his third marriage, he has taken on an assignment to cover Pakistan's border region, and is determined to enter Afghanistan. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist acts, Americans want to know what would motivate such people to commit these atrocious crimes - to use airplanes as lethal weapons to murder thousands of innocents. This job will probably be Skelly's last, his professional "swan song." Our man on the scene is fifty-something and the arduous work does take its toll. So, on the eve of the US and allied invasion of Afghanistan, the reporter arrives ready to rock 'n roll

However, he cannot travel through these dangerous tribal areas alone - impossible! Not only does he need a translator, he needs an intelligent man who is multi-lingual in the various regional languages and who is well versed in the local customs and culture...someone who is attuned to danger before it happens. The reporter needs a "fixer."

Najeeb, a Pashtun whose father is a powerful warlord in the Khyber region, has been banished from tribal lands. Not only has the young man become "worldly" with his American college education in North Carolina, but, under interrogation by Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, he betrayed his father's business in the poppy trade. Although Najeeb's own family members spend most of their time trying to sell-out and double-cross each other - a time-worn tradition - they refuse to admit him back into the fold.

The intelligence agency continues to manipulate Najeeb throughout the novel, which is filled with betrayal, duplicity, intrigue and death, where one is never sure who is friend or foe. Najeeb's home is now in Peshawar where he works as a "fixer." Skelly offers him a job and Najeeb accepts...for the money and to further his own hidden agenda. Fortuitously, one of a multitude of warlords hanging out in Peshawar, is determined to enter Afghanistan at this time and begin an uprising to liberate his countrymen from the terrorists, the Taliban - you name it. Skelly and Najeeb join his caravan in hopes of uncovering the story of a lifetime.

Daliya Qadeer, is an educated, courageous young Pakistani woman, a Punjabi, who tries to be independent, although the repercussions for her attempted modernity could have severe consequences. She is living in Peshawar with an aunt and uncle, away from her beloved parents in Islamabad, because she is resisting an arranged marriage. She "hated Peshawar from the first day, despising its small town strictness and frontier mentality, the dirtiness and refugee chaos. 'The ocean of beards, she called it, feeling she'd been banished to the past, cast into a medieval sea of burquas and holy men, a harsh colony of Pashtuns, driven west by years of war.'" Daliya and Najeeb meet. They slowly and shyly become friends, and then, tentatively, lovers with plans to marry and leave for America.

The storyline is primarily driven by these three characters. One of the many subplots involves a pair of mysterious Americans, (businessmen? CIA?). The Machiavellian geopolitical machinations of the region play a major role also, and there are almost too many plot twists and turns to count.

Dan Fesperman's novel is frequently thrilling, but the narrative and writing do bog down occasionally, and, at times, the repetition of events, the descriptions of people and terrain, become tedious. Make no mistake, this is still a spellbinding tale. Fesperman has won awards for two other novels "Lie in the Dark" and "The Small Boat of Great Sorrows." I plan to read both.

The book caused me to think of the Danny Pearl tragedy. Danny, a journalist who was willing to risk much to get his story, was horribly murdered while attempting to interview a source. There are many such journalists like Danny, and the fictional Skelly, who risk their lives on a daily basis in the most dangerous and politically unstable places in the world, in order to perform the duties of their profession.

Jana Perskie