‘No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes’.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: Indian American journalist Anand Gopal’s riveting book ‘No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes’ (Henry Holt) has been announced as a finalist in the non-fiction category by the National Book Foundation for the National Book Awards.
Gopal has served as an Afghanistan correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor, and has reported on the Middle East and South Asia for Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, and other publications.
Gopal earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University and also completed graduate studies in physics and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. As a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at New America Foundation, Gopal wrote ‘No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes.
He is known for conducting a rare interview with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the reclusive leader of one of the Taliban’s most important allies.
‘No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes’ follows three Afghans — a Taliban commander, a U.S.-backed warlord, and a housewife trapped in the middle of the fighting. The narrative reveals the workings of America’s longest war and the truth behind its prolonged agony.
Here are some reviews that the book received:
“Gopal’s book is essential reading for anyone concerned about how America got Afghanistan so wrong. It is a devastating, well-honed prosecution detailing how our government bungled the initial salvo in the so-called war on terror, ignored attempts by top Taliban leaders to surrender, trusted the wrong people and backed a feckless and corrupt Afghan regime…. It is ultimately the most compelling account I’ve read of how Afghans themselves see the war.” —The New York Times Book Review.
“A brilliant analysis of our military’s dysfunction and a startlingly clear account of the consequences.” —Mother Jones.
“The level of craftsmanship in this book is often awe-inspiring. . . . Provides unique insights into America’s intervention in Afghanistan and makes important contributions to our understanding of the conflict there.” —Foreign Policy.
The full list of finalists:
Fiction:
* Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press)
* Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (Scribner)
* Phil Klay, Redeployment (The Penguin Press)
* Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (Alfred A. Knopf)
* Marilynne Robinson, Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Non-fiction:
* Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury)
* Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes (Henry Holt)
* John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (W.W. Norton & Co.)
* Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
* (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
* Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Poetry:
- Louise Glück, Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Fanny Howe, Second Childhood (Graywolf Press)
- Maureen N. McLane, This Blue (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Fred Moten, The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions)
- Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press)
Young People’s Literature:
- Eliot Schrefer, Threatened (Scholastic Press)
- Steve Sheinkin, The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights (Roaring Brook Press)
- John Corey Whaley, Noggin (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
- Deborah Wiles, Revolution: The Sixties Trilogy, Book Two (Scholastic Press)
- Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books)