Afghan Campaign

Alexander the Great's campaign in Afghanistan began in the summer of 330BC. It was to last for three brutal years and would prove to be the longest and most difficult he and his army ever fought.

This thrilling, urgently-told novel tells the story of this bloody and ruthless conflict from the perspective of a young Macedonian recruit, Matthias - the youngest of three brothers and eager to prove himself - who's volunteered to join the leader he worships on this ambitious expedition into an alien, unknown country we now call Afghanistan. But as he joins the frontline, Matthias begins to realise that the nature of warfare for which he trained so hard has changed irrevocably. Now the Macedonians face a new kind of enemy - and must learn to fight a new kind of war. Experiencing fear, euphoria, horror and shame, Matthias and his fellow foot soldiers undergo a rite of passage as they - soldiers of a Western civilization whose code is basically secular and humanist - seek to impose their will upon a fiercely proud and ruthless warrior nation of the East with deeply-held beliefs, insularity, tribalism and unswerving adherence to the notion of death before surrender. To win, Matthias and his comrades must shake off the trappings of 'civilization' as they know it and adopt the same unorthodox and barbaric tactics as their foes - but at what cost to their souls and their sanity?

Set against the imposing, alien implacability of the Afghan landscape, Steven Pressfield's new novel is his most hard-hitting and enthralling to date. A page-turning, thrillingly evocative, edge-of-your-seat read that also says some important things about the past, present, and perhaps the future, of war...