See here for methodology. I am excluding books not actually set in the current borders of Afghanistan, but there were only two of these (I think).

This week’s winner is not at all surprising. The Kite Runner‘s 3.3 million Goodreads raters beats any book I have looked at so far in this sequence, apart from Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (Italy), and the top books set in the UK and USA. On LibraryThing, its 54,000 owners beat all books other than Romeo and Juliet (also Italy), and again, the top books set in the UK and USA. It really is quite a phenomenon.

As noted, I excluded two books: Greg Mortensen’s Three Cups of Tea, which qualified previously under Pakistan, and Laurence Wright’s The Looming Tower, which covers many places besides Afghanistan.

I’m relieved that there are only two US military stories on the list, and one of those (by Jon Krakauer) is distinctly dissident. But one feels that, were it not for Khaled Hossaini, the literature available to Goodreads and LibraryThing users would almost exclusively portray Afghanistan as a place where white people go and do things which may or may not involve dead locals. Flashman was not much further down the list.

Next is Yemen, which I am surprised to learn has a bigger population than Canada or Poland.

India | China | USA | Indonesia | Pakistan | Nigeria | Brazil (revisited) | Bangladesh (revisited) | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Philippines (revisited) | Ethiopia (revisited) | Egypt | DR Congo | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Germany | France | Thailand | UK | Tanzania | South Africa | Italy | Myanmar | Kenya | Colombia | South Korea | Sudan | Uganda | Spain | Algeria | Iraq | Argentina | Afghanistan