The road to war is always easier than the road to peace, and few peoples know it better than the Afghans, who have lived with almost uninterrupted conflict since 1979. Someone born during the Soviet invasion is now in their forties; measured against a life expectancy of just over sixty-five, the average Afghan has spent two-thirds of a lifetime at war. Imtiaz Ahmed’s ‘The Return of the Taliban in Afghanistan: a critical assessment’ begins from that trauma and asks what it produces — and what the Taliban’s return means for a society formed by four decades of fighting. Published by Prothoma Prokashon, the book is a critical, historically grounded assessment for readers of international politics and South-Central Asian affairs.