This might be a mote too political, but whenever one of my favorite literary characters is mentioned in a blog I like to point it out. Although any reader of this blog might find it hard to believe, due to the dirth of reviews of these books in my book reviews section my favorite series of books is George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman books.
Today, the political writer for National Review, Mark Steyn, quotes from Flashman, the first novel, that is set in Afghanistan.
This I will say for the Afghan – he is a treacherous, evil brute when he wants to be, but while he is your friend he is a first-rate fellow. The point is, you must judge to a second when he is going to cease to be friendly. There is seldom any warning.
Steyn goes on to quote himself from an article he wrote a year and a half ago:
A dozen pages of a Flashman yarn has a sounder grasp of the Afghan psyche than nine years of multilateral “nation-building”. Which is why we’re going round and round in circles in an almighty Groundhogistan where a man gets sentenced to death for converting to Christianity under a court system created, funded and protected by us.
To read the whole post go here, but I recommend instead that you go buy the novel and read it immediately. Flashman has so many more things to say on the subject and really there are few books as fun to read as these.
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