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The Punishment of Virtue
Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban
- Authors: Sarah Chayes
- Category: Non-fiction Current Affairs / Politics Travel
- Publisher: Portobello
- Pub date: 8 March 2007
- Length: 400 pages
About The Punishment of Virtue
it is, quite simply, the best book on Afghanistan since the invasion
- INDEPENDENT
Warlords, jihadist insurgents, opium traders, politicians and police chiefs: they all come under Chayes’ unblinking gaze, and her book yields telling and mesmerizing insights into how the imperially mighty American occupiers are outwitted and outdanced at every turn by lesser forces. The dazzling villain of this story? ISI, Pakistani intelligence, to whom every other group is but a puppet.
About the Author
Born in Washington in 1962, Sarah Chayes was working in Kandahar as a correspondent for US National Public Radio when the Taliban fell in autumn 2001. In 2002, she launched an NGO with the older brother of the Afghan President and now runs a soap co-operative in Kandahar. She was awarded the 1999 Foreign Press Club award for her news reportage. This is her first book.