Chicken Street

Afghanistan before the Taliban

Copyright John Lane

!Published November 2013 - Available through Amazon Kindle Bookstore £3.94!

"Afghanistan: A land of majestic mountains and arid plains - historic and timeless terrain of fearless warriors and the seemingly never-ending Afghan Wars.  A country where there have been many losers in years gone past - and no winners.

This is a true story of civil war and the broken lives of everyday citizens caught in the crossfire of events, a tale of courage and stoicism, domesticity and death in the turbulent times that followed the Soviet withdrawal of 1989, and which gave rise to the emergence of the Taliban.  It is a story of the disposal of the lethal debris of war, bringing tragedy in its wake, interwoven with the earlier transitory triumphs and debacles of the British Empire, sweeping from the heights of the northern Hindu Kush through the gauntlet of the Kabul Gorge roadblocks of murdering warlords and thieving bandits, across scarlet fields of opium-producing poppies to the Khyber Pass, onwards and beyond to the intrigues of Peshawar, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan.

Here is unique glimpse of a wild, alien and inaccessible country, a graveyard for invaders and an apparent no-man's land where truly no one wins.  Chicken Street offers a revealing perspective and insight to the present-day continuance of the spiralling violent repitiveness of Afghanistan's long and restive history."

Illustrated talk by arrangement.