Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story Book

Drafted into the Soviet Army in April 1984 and sent at the age of 19 to serve in Afghanistan as a minesweeper, Vladislav Tamarov turned in secret to the pen and the camera to chronicle his 621 days of war. Photographs depicting the haunted faces of both soldiers and civilians, the country's ragged yet beautiful mountain terrain, and the banality of daily life between missions and interspersed with Tamarov's unsentimental but passionate prose, in which he reveals his growing disorientation and assails his government's folly for engaging in a campaign that has been widely dubbed "the Soviet Vietnam."

A powerful example of the photo essay, Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story presents a powerful portrait of a traumatic war. With images and words bursting with insight, anger, and beauty, Tamarov proves himself a poet of both the word and the image in this moving account.