Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996) in NYTIMES

Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996) wrote a review of Green on Blue by Elliot Ackerman in the New York

Tom Bissell

Times Book Review Section, Sunday, March 1, 2015. In the review of this novel that is set in Afghanistan, Bissell writes: “I pondered my own brief 2001 excursion in Afghanistan, among Northern Alliance guerrillas with whom I could speak a bit thanks to my Peace Corps Uzbek.”

Tom was a PCV for seven months in Uzbekistan before he ETed.

In 2001, or thereabouts, Bissell convinced a magazine to send him back to Central Asia to investigate the Aral Sea’s destruction. There, he joins forces with a young Uzbek named Rustam, and together they make their often wild way through the ancient cities–Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara. Out of this experience came his nonfiction book, Chasing the Sea Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia. He has also written a collection of short stories set in Central Asia entitled, God Lives in St. Petersburg.

His next book, his ninth, comes out in 2016. It is entitled, Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve.