Books & Poetry

Frederick Forsyth is perhaps more famous now as a trenchant commentator on European affairs and curmudgeonly TV interviewee than as a writer of thrillers. His debut ‘The Day of the Jackal’ (reportedly written in 35 days) established his reputation with its meticulous attention to detail and entertaining, if improbable, plot.

‘The Afghan’, which hinges on the recent tragic history of Afghanistan and the new terrorism emerging from it, is neither as accurate nor as entertaining. It swings ramblingly between accounts of the new ‘Great Game’ being waged in central Asia and the sort of opinionated digs at political pieties that fill the Daily Mail. Forsyth’s background as a journalist manifests itself in his suspicion of mandarins from Whitehall to Washington who, in this unconvincing tale, cook up a plan that calls upon a retired SAS officer to pass himself off as a Pashtun escapee from Guantánamo Bay in order to thwart an Al-Qaeda bomb plot. Along the way, there are various long digressions into Afghan history, Western funding of Osama Bin Laden, the perfidy of the Pakistani security services and porous European frontiers.

In places ‘The Afghan’ resembles those ‘heroic’ boys stories of the late Victorian era by writers such as GA Henty, whose tales of derring-do set in what Conrad called ‘the dark places of the earth’ fuelled the imperial project. What is most interesting here, as it is in all Forsyth’s work, is his real ambivalence towards his villains: the real hero here is the Afghan of the title, Izmat Khan. 

Forsyth’s ability to write taut, effective action scenes remains undiminished, but the plotting has gone badly awry, and the novel ends with a whimper masquerading as a very large bang.