The lion's grave : dispatches from Afghanistan

Two weeks after the terrorist attacks of 11 September, Jon Lee Anderson became one of the first Western journalists to gain access to Afghanistan.

Even for a seasoned reporter, the situation was unexpectedly dangerous - there were no clearly demarcated front lines, no electricity or phone lines, and the roads were full of mines and bandits. Anderson stayed in Afghanistan for months, filing first-hand reports for the "New Yorker" on the high-technology conflict in a feudal terrain.

This work brings together these stories, supplemented by unpublished e-mail accounts that transport the reader on to the ground and into the process of war journalism.