Kabul24 is the story of 8 western hostages and 16 Afghan hostages, all employees of Shelter Now International (SNI), who were held by the Taliban for 105 days during 2001.
Having lived in Central Asia for 10 years around this time as a member of a team working for a faith-based humanitarian-aid organisation much like SNI I found it quite moving to read of people just a few hundred miles away who suffered immensely for doing a similar job. The account of their treatment, the conditions in which they lived and the challenges that they faced are harrowing at times, but then any account of being taken hostage by the Taliban isn’t going to be pleasant.
The authors seem slightly unsure in their writing as to whether they are writing a glamorised Hollywood script (it has been made into a film by the same people) or a factual account of an unknown passage of recent history. This confusion is shown when on a number of occasions you get significant quantities of repeated information in very much a “previously on...” style of writing.
Overall this is an interesting account of a relatively unknown group of people, doing a very uncommon job in a very broken and unreached part of the world and for that reason I would commend the book to you as worth reading.
You can buy the book here.
I review books as a blogger for the publisher Thomas Nelson. I am asked to review them honestly and receive no incentive to review them positively.
