This is a story of Afghanistan from the time of it's peak as an international country until the Soviet invasion. This story is told through the eyes of one family. The father, an international diplomat, married an American woman. Three children are born, two sons and a daughter. As the country undergoes a coup, politics change as well as family dynamics as each child takes a different stance on what is happening. Add that to the undercurrent of Islamic fundamentalism and things become very complicated. "Very complicated" is a huge understatement.

That complication is really what makes the book difficult at times. The author obviously is very familiar with the Afghan history and assumes too much from the reader. This is not an easy book to read. I do prefer books that will make me think and I feel that I have learned something, but sometimes to me, this one was overwhelming. I appreciate the effort, the seeming accuracy, and the details, but I will have to admit, I had to push myself to finish.

While I don't have enough knowledge to debate the accuracy of the history of the times, I can comment on that fictional family that provides the story. At times, any one of them was believable and their motives seemed realistic. At other times, that too was a stretch. Tor's relationship with British Elizabeth in Moscow was perhaps the largest. The subplot of Elizabeth's smuggling documents out of Russia in a fur coat took pages and pages and didn't seem to add much to the story of Afghanistan.

This is a sweeping view of that particular time in Afghan history, and it that regard it is interesting and informative. The reader just has to find his or her way through the tangle of personalities and cultures to see the whole picture. ( )