Review: Don’t miss this exciting read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 6, 2014
In this fast-breaking story, Nicolas Kesztheli is not exactly searching out pleasure domes in war-torn Afghanistan.  The sophisticated anti-hero is digging up ancient ivory artifacts for the purpose of smuggling them out of the country and making himself and his international conspirators filthy rich.  He is in and out of the hands of the law, and makes an escape that is terrifying, exhilarating and head spinning.  The ending has a weird but absorbing psychological impact—the reader hangs in a moment of repose, but fully expects another wild ride as the narrator eyes his next international border.  Is this guy getting out in one piece?  The fun of D.Z.C. lies not only in the story line but the interesting quotations from Chinese and Middle-Eastern verse.  Overturning the academic convention of dumping boring corroboration into footnotes, D.Z.C. save some of his funniest lines for these mercurial notes.  Tales of strange feasts and wild gambling in the nightspots of Kabul diversify the narrative, as does Nicolas’s love life:  waking up between “two naked Chinese girls,” after claiming to lack any interest in middle eastern fleshpots, he declares:  ‘wouldn’t you like to say this in your autobiography?’  The dialogue is witty and fast paced, the many forms of vernacular are fun for literary tourists, and the adventure is full of good humor.  Don’t miss this exciting read.