Jason Elliot's "An Unexpected Light" has been pigeon-holed in that genre of literature known as travelogue, but it is a great deal more. An account of the author's two visits to Afghanistan -- the first as a 19-year-old British schoolboy in the early 1980s, the second a decade later when the Taliban was poised to grab power -- it captures his harsh, life-changing experiences with a poignancy that is often startling.
The 10-year gap between his two trips allows Elliot to describe Afghanistan through multiple windows. During his first visit, he camped with anti-Soviet mujahedin in mountain caves, but by the time of his return a decade later the country was racked by civil war. This depth and variety of experience gives the book the kaleidoscopic effect of a novel, or memoir, and, like these genres, it is deeply introspective at times, a spiritual journey inward through the turbulences of the author's consciousness as much as a journey across landscape and time.
Elliott writes in a richly lyrical prose, shorn of vanity. Here is the day that he is initiated into a mujahedin camp with the gift of a pattu (body shawl) of a recently fallen guerrilla:
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