An Afghanistan Picture Show: Or, How I Saved the World

In 1982, the young William T. Vollmann worked odd jobs, including as a secretary at an insurance company, until he´d saved up enough money to go to Afhanistan, where he wanted to join the Mujahideen to fight the Soviets. The resulting book wasn´t published until 1992, and Library Journal rated it: "The wrong book written at the wrong time... With the situation in Afghanistan rapidly heading toward resolution... libraries may safely skip this."Thirty years later -and with the United States still mired in the longest war of its history- it´s time for a reassessment of Vollmann´s heartfelt tale of idealism and its terrifying betrayals. An alloy of documentary and autobiographical elements characteristic of Vollmann´s later nonfiction, An Afghanistan Picture Show is not a work of conventional reportage, but a self-lacerating picaresque, an account of a subtle and stubborn consciousness grappling with the limits of will and idealism imposed by violence and chaos.