“A fascinating account of [Schmidle’s] years in Pakistan . . . The story of two Pakistans the author discovered: one beautiful and friendly, the other frightening and deadly.”— Booklist Nicholas Schmidle beat the Pakistani army into Taliban country. In October 2007, just weeks before thousands of troops, backed by helicopters and artillery fire, marched into the Swat valley to battle the gang of Talibs who had taken over the region, Schmidle rode into the town of Mingora on a public bus. He drove through Taliban-manned checkpoints and took a zipline into a militant camp. Schmidle had spent the previous two years traveling throughout Pakistan, living off a small fellowship which required only that he stay in the country, learn Urdu, and write about what he witnessed. Schmidle’s telling of his gripping adventures, aided by his own deep knowledge of Pakistan’s history, explains to readers the many reasons why Pakistan has grabbed the world’s headlines. To Live or to Perish Forever is an eye-opening and exciting read about this essential place.
The Barnes & Noble Review "The cops came for me on a cold, rainy night." Such nocturnal visitations rarely bode well, let alone for an American journalist in Pakistan reporting on the country's rambunctious politics, a job tailor-made to pique someone's ire, that someone ever and always being the wrong someone. But Nicholas Schmidle doesn't know any better, for he is young, and much of the beauty of his reportage comes from the fresh eye he brings to the flabbergasting array of forces contending for ascendancy. How are you going to get the Pakistan story unless you talk to radical Islamists -- he seeks out jihadists in the same city as did Daniel Pearl -- tribal insurgents, ethnic nationalists, old-school politicos, the military, the rogue intelligence agencies, the man on the street. Just so, and Schmidle will pay for it with his safety; if he doesn't beat that drum, the narrative can't help buzz with tension. But the tension does not obscure Schmidle's illuminations: each chapter reads like a day trip that may happen to last for months, in search of political awareness. He doesn't neglect an elemental sense of place and incident -- the look of a village, a Sufi in a dancing trance, the play of a green kite against a periwinkle sky -- yet he is hungrier for understanding why Pashtuns have a bad reputation, why Pakistan has more assassinations than a porcupine has quills, or what lies behind the rise of the insurrectionary madrassas. Always in evidence is Schmidle's willingness to listen and then report, with polish but without varnish -- thus the late-night knock on the door. -- Peter Lewis

Nicholas Schmidle

Twenty-First Century Books, Incorporated

New York: Henry Holt and Co.

St. Martin's Press

Holt Paperbacks

United States, United States of America

1. Holt paperbacks ed, New York, 2010

Illustrated, 2010

March 2, 2010

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[curator]aababon@innodata.com[/curator][date]20220816202257[/date][state]freeze[/state][comment]Skewed text on pages 187-247[/comment]

Taking readers to Pakistan's rioting streets, to Taliban camps in the North-West Frontier Province, and on many surprising adventures, the author provides a contemporary history of this country long riven by internal conflict.

254 pages : 21 cm

2023-06-28