Captain Nick Russell is an advisor to the Afghan National Army and commands a small group of soldiers. When the Taliban co-opt a local youth to assist in seeding improvised mines, they inadvertently turn the villagers against them. The boy is killed by a British missile.

His father, a Mujahideen veteran, called Gul Khan, blames himself. Bound by the Pashtun honour code to seek vengeance, he chooses to direct his retribution not at the British but at the local Taliban leader, Haji Mansur who gave him just twenty dollars for his son’s life. An intimate account of the shared experience of war; fear, courage, boredom, exhaustion, the ugliness of death, the brutal speed of events.

The main characters have sharp, conflicting loyalties—to causes, family, lovers, comrades in arms, collective ideas— and are haunted by feelings of isolation, flimsy self-esteem, their own past, a sense of honour and a desire for purpose amid the confusion of war.