Games without Rules: The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan Audiobook

Today, most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real, but it sits atop an older struggle between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan—a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam.

Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out and illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood. It is the story of a nation struggling to take form, a nation undermined by its own demons while, every forty to sixty years, a great power crashes in and disrupts whatever progress has been made. Told in conversational, storytelling style and focusing on key events and personalities, Games without Rules provides revelatory insight into a country at the center of political debate.

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"The author offers insights into a topic otherwise hard to grasp for most western people. This book is more than just a narrated history of dates and facts. It also tries to explain the causes of developments and embeds them in Afghan society. The book is written and narrated so well the time just flies by. For the often darker passages the sometimes bitter humor of the author offers some consolation, as do his hopeful outlooks. I recommend the book to everyone interested in the history and culture of Afghanistan but also in the general layout of current global conflicts, imperial "superpowers" and proxy warfare. I hope there will be an update covering the developments between 2012 and 2022."

— C.-F. Vintar (5 out of 5 stars)