The Afghan Exile By Farrukh Seir Ushba Publishing International ISBN: 978-969-9154-67-6 97pp.

A slim volume of just over 100 pages, The Afghan Exile is written by Dr Farrukh Seir, a retired major general and former caretaker minister for health and higher education. In his retired life, Seir has taken up painting and opened an art gallery in Islamabad. The Afghan Exile is his first foray into the literary world.

The author declares that he used artificial intelligence (AI) in writing this novel. He states that AI was used only as a tool, directed at all times by the author himself. Perhaps because of the assistance of AI, the language used in the novel is meticulously correct. There is an overabundance of adjectives and other qualifying words, but the text is flawless and easy to read. Let’s leave the moral questions engendered by this declaration aside for the moment.

The Afghan Exile is a quick read. It tells us of the problems faced by poor, often illiterate, Afghans who become homeless through no fault of their own. It is convoluted global history and the ambitions of nations, which such underprivileged Afghans are only vaguely aware of, that govern their fates.

Izzatullah is the hero of the novel. He is born in Afghanistan but, while still a young child, war and strife push him and his family into neighbouring Pakistan. In his eventful life, Izzatullah is buffeted between the two countries, over and over again. This repeated change of residence, involuntary exile actually, does not allow him to feel at home anywhere.

An Afghan man is repeatedly buffeted between Pakistan and Afghanistan in a slim novel, finding neither country an uncomplicated home as war, exile and circumstance shape his life

An Afghan........

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