A few months after 25 years of conflict came to an end in Afghanistan, Roger Willemsen accompanied a friend on her journey home from Kabul to Kunduz, through the legendary steppe to the river Oxus, the boundary of Tadzhikistan. This is a journal of his adventurous travels through an awakening country. Listening to the extraordinary tales of ordinary Afghanis, he witnesses, as the ‘first tourist’, a world until recently closed to the western world.

In a country racked by war and often misunderstood, Roger Willemsen documents life in a tribal Afghanistan, away from the western media spotlight, shedding light on the divisions, unrest, poverty and humanity of a people who have been oppressed by a succession of foreign invaders and state theocracy. He talks of their hopes for freedom, and the difficulties they are yet to encounter.

‘Beautifully written and very poignant’
–The Good Book Guide

To launch the book, Roger Willemsen was in conversation with Amanda Hopkinson and Stefan Tobler in the Goethe Institute in February 2007.