Used Book – A Captain of No Importance, Patrice Franceschi

In 1983, when the story of Captain Romanov and his company, belonging to the 346th division of the Red Army, begins, the Soviet Union had occupied Afghanistan for four years. Thrown headfirst into battle, Romanov and the 216 men of his unit accept everything in the name of their homeland. Risking their lives with every operation, they kill, raze villages, and shoot down civilians. In the hornet's nest of this elusive country, "a good Afghan is a dead Afghan." But the naked reality of this conflict eventually leads Captain Romanov down an implacable path: that of questioning just and unjust wars. For how can one not see that these Mujahideen and their resistant leaders are fighting for their people, their civilization, their honor, their freedom? How can one not secretly respect the enemy commander who tracks him on the snowy peaks of Wardak Province? From then on, nothing can save Romanov; he dies in combat at the age of thirty, but probably less from enemy bullets than from his discovery of the injustice of this war.