Earth and Ashes
Rahimi, Atiq & Göknar, Erda M. [Rahimi, Atiq & Göknar, Erda M.]The devastation of Afghanistan during the Soviet war is succinctly and piercingly conveyed in Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi (trans. from the Persian by Erdag M. Goknar), a novella-length account of an old man's futile journey. Dastaguir and his grandson Yassin wait beside a guard post on the road to the mine where Dastaguir's son Murad works. The family's village has been bombed, and everyone else in the family is dead; Yassin was deafened by the attack. While he waits for a ride to the mine, Dastaguir is visited by fantastic visions ("You find yourself standing on the branch of a jujube tree, stark naked"). The blasted dreamscape of Rahimi's story and his tightly controlled prose make this a sobering literary testament to the horrors of war.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
After the invading Soviets destroy their village, an elderly Afghani takes his grandson on a quest to find the boy's father. The Paris-based Rahimi, a documentary filmmaker now trying his hand at fiction, fled Afghanistan at the time of the invasion.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.