A reporter's vivid account of Central Asia's wild recent history--violent in the extreme and rife with characters both heroic and corrupt

It sounds like the stuff of a fiction thriller: two revolutions, a massacre of unarmed civilians, a civil war, a drug-smuggling highway, brazen corruption schemes, contract hits, and larger-than-life characters who may be villains . . . or heroes . . . or possibly both. Yet this book is not a work of fiction. It is instead a gripping, firsthand account of Central Asia's unfolding history from 2005 to the present.Philip Shishkin, a prize-winning journalist with extensive on-the-ground experience in the tumultuous region above Afghanistan's northern border, focuses mainly on Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Both nations have struggled with the enormous challenges of post-Soviet independent statehood; both became entangled in America's Afghan campaign when U.S. military bases were established within their borders. At the same time, the region was developing into a key smuggling hub for Afghanistan's booming heroin trade. Through the eyes of local participants--the powerful and the powerless--Shishkin reconstructs how Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have ricocheted between extreme repression and democratic strivings, how alliances with the United States and Russia have brought mixed blessings, and how Stalin's legacy of ethnic gerrymandering incites conflict even now.

作者簡介

菲利浦．席斯金 Philip Shishkin

專業記者。任職《華爾街日報》全球特派通訊記者長達十年，報導範圍涵蓋世界各地。他曾在伊拉克派系內戰時期，擔任華爾街日報駐巴格達辦公室主管，席斯金的報導同時關注於土耳其、阿富汗、巴爾幹半島、中亞及歐美地。文章發表於《新聞週刊》、《外交政策》、《世界事務雙月刊》、路透社以及彭博社等媒體。目前定居北京，為自由作家，也是亞洲協會(Asia Society)會員。

譯者簡介

吳緯疆

世新大學傳播研究所碩士，自由譯者。譯有《旅行的異義》、《成為黃種人》、《自戀時代》、《設計解剖全書》、《時尚的力量》、《地球與人》等書。