Drafted into the Soviet Army in April 1984 and sent at the age of 19 to serve in Afghanistan as a minesweeper, Vladislav Tamarov turned in secret to the pen and the camera to chronicle his 621 days of war. Photographs depicting the haunted faces of both soldiers and civilians, the country’s mountainous terrain, and the banality of daily life are interspersed with Tamarov’s unsentimental but passionate prose.