There have to be some good ones out there…the websites I’m finding are only skimming the surface, it seems…
The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling is about two shiftless British adventurers in Afghanistan. It was made into an excellent movie with Sean Connery and Michael Caine. A number of Kipling’s poems were also about British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. IIRC, Kipling spent time in an Afghan prison.
Unfortunately, I have no recommendations if you’re looking for non-fiction.
An Unexpected Light, by Jason Elliot. It describes Elliot’s travels in Afghanistan. It is recent (post-Taliban), it describes what people are feeling and how they are living, and Elliot is a great writer.
The best work on Afghanistan is by Saira Shah, and is being shown on CNN Presents (or they were showing it). Shah went under cover into Afghanistan, and she shows what is really happening there, using her own film and film by the RAWA. It is a remarkable piece.
Yup, HS, was hoping for non-fiction, but thanks 
Thanks for the title, dlb, will check that out. And the CNN show you’re talking about…does it end with the narrator in her father’s hometown and finding nothing man made left standing? If so, I completely agree - was an excelling program.
Try The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist’s Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan by Artyom Borovik.
You can read a review here.
The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk.
This book chronicles, among other things, the British and Russian attempts to take over Afghanistan in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Almost as difficult then as it is now.
Haj