Synopses & Reviews
When the Soviet army arrives in Afghanistan, the elderly Dastaguir witnesses the destruction of his village and the death of his clan. His young grandson Yassin, deaf from the sounds of the bombing, is one of the few survivors. The two set out through an unforgiving landscape, searching for the coal mine where Murad, the old man's son and the boy's father, works. They reach their destination only to learn that they must wait and rely for help on all that remains to them: a box of chewing tobacco, some unripe apples, and the kindness of strangers.
Haunting in its spareness, Earth and Ashes is a tale of devastating loss, but also of human perseverance in the face of madness and war.
Review
EUROPEAN PRAISE FOR
EARTH AND ASHES"With this novel Rahimi picks up a shard of broken glass and sees the whole truth of his devastated country."--Der Spiegel (Germany)
"Evokes with intimacy and lyricism the tragedy of a country."--Libération (France)
"A literary creation of a kind not seen for years."--L'Express (France)
"The history of Yassin and his grandfather does for our time what Antigone did for the Greeks. . . . Extraordinary."--La Marseillaise (France)
"A hallucinatory, tragic cry of despair."--Le Monde (France)
About the Author
ATIQ RAHIMI was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1962. In 1984, he left Afghanistan during the war with the Soviet Union, eventually obtaining political asylum in France. After earning a doctorate in communications at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, he currently works as a documentary filmmaker. Earth and Ashes is his first book. Rahimi lives in Paris. ERDAG GOKNAR is a highly acclaimed translator of Turkish and Persian. His recent translation of My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (Knopf, 2001) was widely praised.