The acclaimed author of The Wasted Vigil now gives us a searing, exquisitely written novel set in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the months following 9/11: a story of war, of one familys losses, and of the simplest, most enduring human impulses.

Jeo and Mikal are foster brothers from a small town in Pakistan. Though they were inseparable as children, their adult lives have diverged: Jeo is a dedicated medical student, married a year; Mikal has been a vagabond since he was fifteen, in love with a woman he cant have. But when Jeo decides to sneak across the border into Afghanistannot to fight with the Taliban against the Americans, rather to help care for wounded civiliansMikal determines to go with him, to protect him.

Yet Jeos and Mikals good intentions cannot keep them out of harms way. As the narrative takes us from the wilds of Afghanistan to the heart of the family left behindtheir blind father, haunted by the death of his wife and by the mistakes he may have made in the name of Islam and nationhood; Mikals beloved brother and sister-in-law; Jeos wife, whose increasing resolve helps keep the household running, and her superstitious motherwe see all of these lives upended by the turmoil of war.

In language as lyrical as it is piercing, in scenes at once beautiful and harrowing, The Blind Mans Garden unflinchingly describes a crucially contemporary yet timeless world in which the line between enemy and ally is indistinct, and where the desire to return home burns brightest of all.