Anyone read the book?

The book is good and certainly worth reading.

I've read the book. It is so different from the film that they are hardly the same thing: the book and film are more different even than they were for "The Shining".

I'm not sure which is better. In the book, Garrigan does not leave the village until about a third of the way through. I found this first third of the book extremely boring. Thereafter, it is quite good; it's more historically accurate than the film, and it goes right up to the point where Amin is deposed from power.

It's worth reading, but you need patience for the first third.