In one of the most unusual books to be published in recent times, Lt. Gen. Asad  Durrani, who was chief of Pakistan’s all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the 1990s, has collaborated on a set of espionage dialogues with A.S. Dulat, the former head of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

India and Pakistan are bitter adversaries whose relationship is defined by short bursts of friendship punctuating prolonged periods of violent conflict and tension. These are countries that have officially gone to war four times and remain locked in asymmetric warfare for decades.  So the idea that the erstwhile captains of their covert agencies should even talk amiably, leave alone co-author a book, is unimaginable.