Afghan Liaisons: War Coming Home

This political political thriller was completed in 1995, long before 9/11, the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement. The book foreshadows all three and is more topical now than when it was written, given recent developments in Northern Africa and South-West Asia. The main characters in this novel are a coloured German journalist, who is sent to Tunesia to report on the murder of an elderly German woman, allegedly by a Tunesian boy; a beautiful woman painter from New York, who is looking for the murderer of her sister, who was involved in the drugs trade; a wealthy retired US diplomat who regrets his CIA past and attempts to shake up world opinion; and his Tunesian confidant who is playing his own games. The book is dealing with the growing rifts between the rich and the poor and the old and the young, as well as dilemmas regarding identity, political loyalty and armed intervention in foreign lands. Drugs, sex and terrorism feature strongly in this book, that draws on meticulour thematic and location research and manages to both entertain and inform about some of today's burning issues. The author is a recently retired European diplomat who served a.o. as ambassador in Sarajevo and in postings in Tehran, Bonn/Berlin and Vienna. In his ministry of foreign affairs, he served a.o. as a member of the policy planning staff and worked in departments dealing with security-related and regional issues. Between 1973-1975 and 1988-1990, the author lived on Manhattan, where he obtained a Masters in Law at Columbia University and worked for the United Nations and The Ford Foundation.