August in Kabul

An award-winning journalist’s firsthand account of the US evacuation of Kabul in 2021.

As night fell on August 15, 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. After a twenty-year conflict with the United States, its Western allies, and a proxy Afghan government, the Islamic militant group once aligned with al Qaeda was about to bury yet another foreign foe in the graveyard of empires. And for the US, it was yet another foreign disaster. As cities and towns fell to the Taliban in rapid succession, Western troops and embassy staff scrambled to flee a country of which its government had lost control.

August in Kabul is the remarkable record of how America's longest mission came to an abrupt and humiliating end, told through the eyes of Afghans whose lives have been turned upside down: a young woman who dreams of a university education; a presidential staffer who tries desperately to hold things together as the government collapses around him; a prisoner in the notorious Bagram Prison who suddenly finds himself free when prison guards abandon their post. Andrew Quilty was one of only a handful of Western journalists who stayed in Kabul as the city fell. This is his stunning account of those dramatic final days.

Andrew Quilty is an Australian investigative reporter and photojournalist. He is the recipient of nine Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, for his work in Afghanistan, where he was based from 2013 to 2022. He has also received the George Polk Award, the World Press Photo Award, and the Overseas Press Club of America award for his investigation into massacres committed by a CIA-backed Afghan militia.