KANDAK: Fighting with Afghans - Hardcover

HENNESSEY Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846144051 ISBN 13: 9781846144059

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2012

Synopsis

This title comes from the author of the top ten bestseller The Junior Officers' Reading Club. When Patrick Hennessey returned home from Afghanistan, battle-worn, exhilarated, unsure if he'd see anything like it in his life again, he left behind him bands of friendship forged in the heat of the moment between living and dying. The comrades he left furthest behind were Qiam, Syed and Majhib. They are still there in the dust and heat of Helmand, soldiers fighting for their homeland. "Kandak" is the story of how these lasting bonds were made. Written in the spare and lucid prose of "Junior Officers' Reading Club", Patrick Hennessey tells of their comically bad first meetings, the mutual suspicion, incomprehension and cultural divides that characterize early interactions between British and Afghan soldiers, to the moments under fire when those divides can, sometimes, cross chaos and culture shocks to turn into brotherhood. An account of friendship and loss, of warriors and soldiers, "Kandak" explores the reasons men pick up the sword, and how in the intensity of battle, unlikely alliances can be formed.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Hennessey was born in 1982 and educated at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read English. On leaving university he joined the Army and served from 2004 to 2009 as an officer in The Grenadier Guards. In between guarding towers, castles and palaces he worked in the Balkans, Africa, South East Asia, the Falkland Islands and deployed on operational tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. On leaving the Army he wrote his first book The Junior Officers' Reading Club, a memoir of a brief but eventful stint in uniform. He is now a barrister.

Review

Required reading ... unfettered, unpretentious prose ... peppered with amusing anecdotes, a moving, humbling and rare account -- Terri Judd Independent Graced with characters who might easily belong in a Rudyard Kipling or George MacDonald Fraser story -- Ben Felsenburg Metro A passionate tribute to the Afghan soldiers he fought alongside in Helmand ... a serious piece of work ... excellent -- Stephen Morrison Sunday Times Beautifully written with a mix of cantonment vernacular and Oxford-educated erudition, gives important insights at a crucial time in Afghanistan's transition -- Rupert Edis Daily Telegraph His prose is lean and muscular, characterised by dry wit and acute intelligence. He also has a novelist's eye for the vivid image and the telling detail -- Simon Griffith Daily Mail Soldiers who can write are as rare as writers who can strip down a machinegun in forty seconds, but Patrick Hennessey is one of the few Sunday Times Hennessey is an exceptional talent Times This variously tender, ironic and ferocious new voice gives us literature and not propaganda Independent Hennessey has a reporter's eye for detail and a soldier's nose for bullshit Guardian It's extremely rare to have this level of analytical intelligence combined with brutal first-hand experience William Boyd Hennessey has a reporter's eye for detail and a soldier's nose for bullshit Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1846144051
• ISBN 13: 9781846144059
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 376