New Book

Since President Ashraf Ghani’s election in 2014, discussion of impend-ing reconciliation talks with the armed opposition of the Taliban has been intensifying. Taliban sources confirmed contacts and indicated they were gearing up towards formal talks.

Perspectives Asia is a publication series of the Asia Desk of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung published in cooperation with the offices of the foundation in Asia.

Bengali classic ‘Deshe Bideshe’, which chronicles Afghan history and politics, translated into English. Written by Syed Mujtaba Ali in 1948, ‘Desh Bideshe’ is the only published eyewitness account of that tumultuous period by a non-Afghan.

With the time frame around the transition of Allied military and security operations to the Government of Afghanistan looking more and more uncertain, difficult questions persist; Have the Allied Forces achieved what they set out to do and what legacy will they leave?

For the past two years, Lorenzo Tugnoli and I have looked at the city of Kabul through the eyes of a number of artists. Their stories are told in The Little Book of Kabul, which we released in 500 copies.

Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies(AISS) published an election-related book titled ”Afghan Democracy: Opportunities and obstacles”. This book consists of articles coming form different perception which mainly focus on the experiences of the last election and shed the light for the future.

In Afghanistan, the third Great Game is still on. The end of US–NATO combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of 2014 will be read by many as ‘Obama’s Vietnam’, but the retention of a small number of troops and several military facilities by the US in that country will be a source of worry.

One either rejects the killing of non-combatants on principle or takes a more tribal approach to such matters. The global outpouring of grief and condemnation over the killing of three Israeli youths is the moral equivalent of Rolf Harris denouncing Jimmy Savile.

While feminists have long recognised the importance of self-managed, alternative media to transport their messages, to challenge the status quo, and to spin novel social processes, this topic has been an under-researched area.

Two books covering every aspect of the Zhivago affair in detail, from Pasternak’s early life and the origins of his novel to the bombshell of its first publication in 1957, the nature of the CIA’s intervention, and the aftermath for Pasternak and his associates.