NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

The author is a renowned French – Afghan writer and film-maker. A young woman is taking care of her comatose husband, in a small room, abandoned by both his and her families. As the heavy silence begins to suffocate her, she sees a chance to speak without being censored, interrupted or criticised, to spill out the secrets she’s kept locked away for so long, in a desperate need to make her husband rise up and explode like the stone – A brief, melodramatic novel that follows the circumscribed movement of a Muslim woman largely confined to the house where she nurses her comatose husband, who’s been shot by a fellow jihadist. A clever novel in which readers get a glimpse of daily life in a country terrorized by conflict and religious fundamentalism. A picture painted with nuance and subtlety. A slender, devastating exploration of one woman’s tormented inner life. Rahimi’s lyric prose is simple and poetic -Atiq Rahimi gives us Afghanistan’s terrible legacy in the story of one woman’s suffering. Anyone seeking to understand why Afghanistan is difficult and what decades of violence have done to its people, should read this book – In spare, unflinching prose, the author gives us Afghanistan’s terrible legacy in the story of one woman’s suffering. The book is a superb guide to a hard and complex land.