| Reviews One of New York Times Ten Best Books of 2006.
 ". . . a striding, glorious book. But it's more than great journalism. It's a great travel narrative . . . He writes with a mystic's appreciation of the natural world, a novelist's sense of character and a comedian's sense of timing."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Remarkable . . . [Stewart] records in plain prose a frightening journey across a land only the naïve could call a nation . . . Gripping account of a courageous journey, observed with a scholar’s eye and a humanitarian’s heart."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A lesson in good travel writing. By turns harrowing and meditative . . . edifying at every step . . . [Stewart’s] prose is lean and unsentimental: whether pushing through chest-high snow in the mountains of Hazarajat or through the villages still under de facto Taliban control, his descriptions offer a cool assessment of a landscape and a people eviscerated by war, forgotten by time and isolated by geography."
--Publishers Weekly
"Nation building in Afghanistan remains a work in progress, and this work should help those who wish to understand the complexities of that task."
--Booklist
"This is an astonishing achievement: a unique journey of great courage."
--Colin Thubron
"This is travelling at its hardest and travel-writing at its best: a most perilous journey recounted with skill and understanding."
--David Gilmour
"On foot through the Afghan winter, with only a toothless mastiff for company, Stewart is so far off the beaten track that his evocative book feels like a long lost relic of the great age of exploration."
--The Guardian
"With a deft, at times poetic vividness, he describes an awesome landscape, scarred by a present and a past of violence and death . . . His encounters with Afghans are tragic, touching and terrifying; they all have the ring of unembellished authenticity . . . A mature debut, and an intelligent and illuminating introduction to this fascinating, unfortunate country."
--The Daily Telegraph
"Stewart's ability to speak Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, and his understanding of Islamic culture, give him an insight into the country which few could match. The result is an unsentimental and revealing portrait of a country that we have always admired and feared, but about which we know too little."
--The New Statesman
"Thank goodness for brave people doing crazy things and for a writer in the tradition of Thesiger and Thubron."
--The Spectator
"An extraordinary journey across one of the world's most unsettled countries -- the accumulations of meetings and slowing changing landscapes, the tragedy of war and the humour of its survivors, the sight of men throwing open their doors and the occasional boys flinging stones -- all this casts light on a part of the world about which we have heard a great deal and about which we know little."
--The Sunday Times
"A compelling account of a dizzying journey on foot."
--Peter Marsden, The Times Literary Supplement
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