Foreign correspondent Kim Barker’s personal account of reporting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, The Taliban Shuffle, is a fiercely honest – and occasionally hilarious – dissection of the absurdities of an intractable conflict. Barker, previously South Asia bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune, abandons the journalist’s conventional poker-faced neutrality for a mordant take on the newest American – and Australian – military quagmire. In conversation with Karen Middleton (An Unwinnable War).