Description

It’s 1841: the British have invaded Afghanistan. A 100 miles north of the capital, a mysterious beggar enters a tiny village…

The Widow’s Husband (also available in softcover from amazon.com incidentally) is an epic work of historical fiction--the first novel to tell the story of British imperialism from the Afghan side. Three years after the British occupation of Kabul, news of the invasion still hasn’t reached the village of Char Bagh. Here, the biggest excitement of the season is a mysterious vagabond who has wandered onto a nearby hillside. Is he a madman? Perhaps. But he just might be a God-crazed madman, a malang, a man with the power to channel miracles. And indeed, he does soon begin to transform the lives of the villagers—the brooding headman Ibrahim, his djinn-haunted wife Soraya, the headman’s charismatic sister-in-law, the widowed Khadija…

But the isolation of Char Bagh is about to end. British officials are scouring the countryside for conspirators. They dispatch a priapic young officer to study the pilgrims streaming in and out of Char Bagh. History is about to reach its long fingers into the heart of this remote hamlet.

From the soot-blackened kitchens of Afghan village compounds to the battle-choked streets of Kabul, from the gorgeous fortresses of Afghan tribal lords to the walled British cantonments where the chandeliers kept glowing and the proper memsahibs kept on hosting dinner parties almost to the very end, this extraordinary novel takes readers into a historical drama that eerily foreshadows events of our own time.