Shortly after 11th September 2001, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an email to 20 friends, telling how the threatened US reprisals against Afghanistan looked to him as an Afghan American. The message spread, and in a few days it had reached, and affected, millions of people - Afghans, and Americans, soldiers and pacifists, conservative CHristians and talk-show hosts; for the message, written in 20 minutes, was one Ansary had been writing all his life. Ansary has emerged as one of the most eloquent voices on the conflict between Islam and the West. His book is a deeply personal account of the struggle to reconcile two great civilizations and to find some point in the imagination where they might meet.