Aatish Taseer
The Quiet American
Undercover Muslim: A Journey into Yemen
By Theo Padnos
The Bodley Head 293pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
‘Curiosity’, Conrad tells us in Lord Jim, ‘is the most obvious of sentiments.’ And if it was curiosity, restlessness, a dislike of George W Bush, or even boredom with his job as an English teacher in a Vermont prison that made Theo Padnos drop what he was doing and set out for Yemen, he should just tell us as much.
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