A quick book review based on faulty recollections

I enjoyed James Michener’s early book, Caravans, about Afghanistan. It’s not one of his more successful works, but it it’s under 600 pages and I’ve read it’s his most dramatic (and least purely historical) piece of documentary fiction.

My memory of the book is in doubt, of course, since all recollections which survive the Black Hole which link my short-term memory to my long-term emerge faulty and distorted.

The story is about the search for a privileged politician’s daughter who goes missing while on a humanitarian mission to Afghanistan in the early 1960s. It describes the harsh brutality and primitive life in the desert, made only more violent by the Mullahs (Islam’s version of Christianity’s Pharisees and Sadducees, but with guns and badges) who reign terror and distrust progress.

But again, if memory serves half of what I consumed, the story begs the question “Who are the Savages? The “Civilized” or the “Uncivilized?”

I bought the Audible version since I can’t read words on paper anymore. If I’m 2000% wrong, I’ll come back and correct myself.

If I don’t remember, drop me a line.