Word: enigma
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...other main opposition force, led by pro-king supporter Hamed Karzai, is something of an enigma. Karzai gives interviews by sat-phone from "somewhere in Oruzgan province" claiming that he's amassed 5,000 men and is marching southwards through the mountains to Kandahar. It may be true that Karzai once was in Oruzgan - he was rescued from a Taliban ambush six weeks back by U.S. choppers - but there are some doubts that he's still there. One reliable Pakistani tribal elder told TIME that Karzai is making his sat-phone broadcasts from a secluded house in Toba Achakzai...
...Vidiadhar is also a great prose stylist and innovator. In The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World, he has evolved a signature blend of autobiography, artifice and journalism that tests (even by today's liberal definitions) the limits of conventional fiction. Half A Life (Knopf; 211 pages), the latest hybrid, begins in colonial India with a droll anecdote. The son of a Brahmin family marries a low-caste woman and forfeits his social standing. He is a maharaja's tax clerk who, influenced by Gandhi's politics of poverty, makes false account entries in favor of poor...
...What is it about Cambodia that renders it so irresistible to writers and photographers? Are we beguiled by the gentleness of the people? Or by the enigma of why a country once famed for its lotus-eaters should be so bedeviled by war and suffering, much of it self-inflicted? Whatever the root of Neveu's obsession, we all benefit from his pictures, which are powerfully displayed in Cambodia: The Years of Turmoil (Asia Horizons; 160 pages...
...causing pandemonium on the stage. And the coup is: This handsome rock group is not New Order. Because the irony of the video is undetectable to a younger market unaware of New Order’s heyday two deacdes before, the band have maintained their signature question mark and enigma. In addition, it is a brilliant marketing device by their label to sell records to the aforementioned teenage TRL crowd who have never heard of New Order, interpret their video as the heralding of a cool new rock band, and buy the new album. For the band, it makes...
...then there is the enigma inside a batting helmet that is Bonds. It was easy to get behind Big Mac, a big man who couldn't wait to share his vulnerability, or Slammin' Sammy, the Dominican kid who overcame all the odds. But Brooding Barry? The closest Bonds gets to pathos is admitting that he has felt intimidated by the expectations of his storied baseball lineage. His father Bobby was a three-time All-Star; his godfather Willie Mays is a baseball god. Not exactly a relatable problem for most bleacher bums. Bonds can alienate fans with his aloofness...