In this book, Manchanda argues that Afghanistan occupies a distinctive place in the imperial imagination that is over-determined and under-theorized, owing largely to the particular history of imperial intervention in the region. She shares a new narrative and removes the myths surrounding the study of Afghanistan by focusing on representations of gender, state, and tribes, while providing a sustained critique of colonial forms of knowing. Manchanda utilizes a methodologically diverse toolkit to demonstrate how the development of pervasive tropes in Western conceptions of Afghanistan has enabled Western intervention, invasion, and bombing in the region from the nineteenth century to the present. Overall, the book provides an interdisciplinary framework through which to study modern Afghanistan.