The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul Hardcover - 2009

Media reviews

J. Malcolm Garcia's The Khaarijee is a beautifully written book. The intimacy of Garcia's reflections on life and Afghanistan, combined with his flash-bang prose, gives readers the much-desired, but rarely achieved, sensation of being inside a writer's head. Garcia's honesty makes The Khaarijee an irresistible read.—Nicholas Schmidle, author of To Live or To Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan

"The Khaarijee is a moving and surprising account of the endless conflict in Afghanistan. J. Malcolm Garcia has managed something really special: salvaging humor, friendship, and brotherhood from a brutal, war-scarred landscape. This is a great and illuminating read."—Daniel Alarcón, author of Lost City Radio

"Mr. Garcia's Afghanistan seems nearly next door in this marvelously, modestly potent account, layered with the riddles and bafflement of war, yet ruddy with the author's own empathy, and rendered in splendid exactitude. I was quite riveted."—Edward Hoagland, author of Compass Points: How I Lived

"J. Malcolm Garcia is a journalist with a poet's soul. His account of the war in Afghanistan is full of the subtle betrayals and acts of faith that any witness to war must bear. The Khaarijee is full of a sorrowful hope. This is one of the finest accounts of shattered families and lives in a war-torn country and the desire by one individual who hopes beyond hope for nothing more than to save a few lives."—Matthew Eck, author of The Farther Shore