A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear


Book Description

Iarhad lives in Kabul in 1979, and the early days of the pro-Soviet coup are about to change his life forever.




Three by Atiq Rahimi


Book Description

Three short novels—including Prix Goncourt–winning The Patience Stone —that convey years of Afghan history, heartache, and hope. Never before in paperback. Atiq Rahimi’s reputation for writing war stories of immense drama and intimacy began with his first novel, Earth and Ashes, about fathers and sons and the terrible strain inflicted on families, when an Afghan village is destroyed by the Russian army. A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear takes place in 1979, during a period of social and political upheaval in Kabul. On the way home from a night of drinking, a university student named Farhad is arrested and brutally beaten. A few hours later, broken and confused, he slowly regains consciousness, only to find himself in the care of a beautiful woman who has dragged him into her home to protect him. Winner of the Prix Goncourt, The Patience Stone is the tale of a woman caring for her brain-damaged husband, who was shot in the neck during a petty conflict. After years of living in a society of Islamic fundamentalism, she finds herself strangely liberated by her husband’s condition. She tells him her innermost thoughts and secrets, many of them dark and deeply repressed, never knowing whether he’s able to hear her or not.




Earth and Ashes


Book Description

"You know, father, sorrow can turn to water and spill from your eyes, or it can sharpen your tongue into a sword, or it can become a time bomb that, one day, will explode and destroy you" Earth and Ashes is the spare, powerful story of an Afghan man, Dastaguir, trying desperately to reach his son Murad, who has left his village to earn a living working at a mine. In the meantime the village has been bombed by the Russian army, and Dastaguir, with his newly-deaf grandson Yassin in tow, must reach Murad to tell him of the carnage. The old man is beset on all sides by sorrow, that of his grandson, who cannot understand, that of his son, who does not yet know, and his own, made even crueler by the message he must deliver. Atiq Rahimi, whose reputation for writing war stories of immense drama and intimacy began with this, his first novel, has managed to condense centuries of Afghan history into a short tale of three very different generations. But he has also created a universal story about fathers and sons, and the terrible strain inflicted on those bonds of family during the unpredictable carnage of war.




A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear


Book Description

"Set in Kabul just before the Soviet invasion of December 1979, this extraordinary book is both the story of a student in fear for his life, and the story of Afghanistan - a beautiful, wounded country torn apart by religion and politics. Its action takes place over just two nights; its events are triggered by the random persecution of a young man as he makes his way home one evening, a little drunk, and is set upon by soldiers. Beaten to a pulp, Farhad is dragged by a strange woman into her house where he spends the night half believing he has died and is suffering the deserved punishment of an infidel. Yet as the reality of his situation starts to assert itself and he learns the terrible story of the woman who harbours him, he begins to feel an impossible and forbidden love for her - a love that embodies an angry compassion for the suffering of Afghanistan's women, and the yearning for a lost home." "A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear is a novel of interiors. It unfolds almost entirely within the confines of a house, a mosque and a mind. As Rahimi leads us through his claustrophobic labyrinth - as maze-like as the patterns on an Afghan carpet - he takes us ever deeper into the soul and imagination of his country."--BOOK JACKET.




The Ten Thousand Things


Book Description

Set between Holland and a remote Indonesian island, this intimate magical realism novel offers “an offbeat narrative that has the timeless tone of a legend” (Time). “Dermoût’s sentences came at me like a soft knowing dagger, depicting a far-off land that felt to me like the blood of all the places I used to love.” —Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild The Ten Thousand Things is at once novel of shimmering strangeness—and familiarity. It is the story of Felicia, who returns with her baby son from Holland to the Spice Islands of Indonesia, to the house and garden that were her birthplace, over which her powerful grandmother still presides. There Felicia finds herself wedded to an uncanny and dangerous world, full of mystery and violence, where objects tell tales, the dead come and go, and the past is as potent as the present. First published in Holland in 1955, Maria Dermoût's novel was immediately recognized as a magical work, like nothing else Dutch—or European—literature had seen before. The Ten Thousand Things is an entranced vision of a far-off place that is as convincingly real and intimate as it is exotic, a book that is at once a lament and an ecstatic ode to nature and life.




A Thousand Rooms


Book Description

You don't wake up expecting to die... Katie is thirty-two, single, and used to work in advertising. She's also dead. A lost soul hitching rides with the dying, trying to find her way to... wherever she's supposed to be. And whoever she's supposed to be with. Heaven, it seems, has a thousand rooms. What will it take to find hers?




A Curse on Dostoevsky


Book Description

Reading Dostoevsky in Afghanistan becomes “crime without punishment” Rassoul remembers reading Crime and Punishment as a student of Russian literature in Leningrad, so when, with axe in hand, he kills the wealthy old lady who prostitutes his beloved Sophia, he thinks twice before taking her money or killing the woman whose voice he hears from another room. He wishes only to expiate his crime and be rightfully punished. Out of principle, he gives himself up to the police. But his country, after years of civil war, has fallen into chaos. In Kabul there is only violence, absurdity, and deafness, and Rassoul’s desperate attempt to be heard turns into a farce. This is a novel that not only flirts with literature but also ponders the roles of sin, guilt, and redemption in the Muslim world. At once a nostalgic ode to the magic of Persian tales and a satire on the dire reality of now, A Curse on Dostoevsky also portrays the resilience and wit of Afghani women, an aspect of his culture that Rahimi never forgets.




Three by Atiq Rahimi


Book Description

Three short novels--including Prix Goncourt-winning The Patience Stone--that convey years of Afghan history, heartache, and hope. Never before in paperback. Atiq Rahimi's reputation for writing war stories of immense drama and intimacy began with his first novel, Earth and Ashes, about fathers and sons and the terrible strain inflicted on families, when an Afghan village is destroyed by the Russian army. A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear takes place in 1979, during a period of social and political upheaval in Kabul. On the way home from a night of drinking, a university student named Farhad is arrested and brutally beaten. A few hours later, broken and confused, he slowly regains consciousness, only to find himself in the care of a beautiful woman who has dragged him into her home to protect him. Winner of the Prix Goncourt, The Patience Stone is the tale of a woman caring for her brain-damaged husband, who was shot in the neck during a petty conflict. After years of living in a society of islamic fundamentalism, she finds herself strangely liberated by her husband's condition. She tells him her innermost thoughts and secrets, many of them dark and deeply repressed, never knowing whether he's able to hear her or not.




Contemplating Everyday Texts: An Interdisciplinary Review


Book Description

It has a collection of twenty papers by scholarly authors who have discussed various issues and subject matters that explore multiple perspectives from different disciplines, sub-disciplines and areas of expertise. The book provides rich theoretical descriptions and hands-on approach that is conceptual and practical and reflects advances in the literature on research, learning, and assessment. Multiple perceptions produce deeper understanding or illumination, viable solution or a product that creatively and innovatively accommodates different perspectives. As a maturing academic field, interdisciplinary studies needs to define itself to make the case that interdisciplinarity is, in fact, contributing something distinctive and valuable to the academy and to society. The movement is from the most general to the more specific, from breadth to depth. An Interdisciplinary insight is an expert’s view on a particular problem that is based on research. This approach is produced when the interdisciplinary research process is used to create an integrated and purposeful result. In this book, disciplinary experts, scholars and students have to produce insights. The edited book highlights the valuable ideas, views, outlook, observations and thoughts in the form of chapters by authors from reputed institutions across India. It is a complete package, consisting of an interdisciplinary review of diverse ideas and considerations highlighted by the authors belonging to different disciplines. Modern technological developments and globalization add to the complexity of problems and in response, an integrated approach is very much required. Each author’s focus is on another innovative factor at a different level of analysis, using different theoretical frameworks, and different methodologies. These various aspects discussed and displayed through the interdisciplinary examination, in fact, stimulate and invigorate the aspiring research scholars, academicians, researchers to look deeper into some of the issues for further exploration. It will be, indeed, a very good reading the miscellaneous discussion about integrative research papers which is a sort of innovation—that is, change—in the means of knowledge production. Here the researchers thoroughly studied the subject and integrate the information to produce new understandings and meanings.




The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction


Book Description

A user-friendly reference for English-language readers who are eager to explore contemporary fiction from around the world. Profiling hundreds of titles and authors from 1945 to today, with an emphasis on fiction published in the past two decades, this guide introduces the styles, trends, and genres of the world's literatures, from Scandinavian crime thrillers and cutting-edge Chinese works to Latin American narco-fiction and award-winning French novels. The book's critical selection of titles defines the arc of a country's literary development. Entries illuminate the fiction of individual nations, cultures, and peoples, while concise biographies sketch the careers of noteworthy authors. Compiled by M. A. Orthofer, an avid book reviewer and the founder of the literary review site the Complete Review, this reference is perfect for readers who wish to expand their reading choices and knowledge of contemporary world fiction. “A bird's-eye view of titles and authors from everywhere―a book overfull with reminders of why we love to read international fiction. Keep it close by.”—Robert Con Davis-Udiano, executive director, World Literature Today “M. A. Orthofer has done more to bring literature in translation to America than perhaps any other individual. [This book] will introduce more new worlds to you than any other book on the market.”—Tyler Cowen, George Mason University “A relaxed, riverine guide through the main currents of international writing, with sections for more than a hundred countries on six continents.”—Karan Mahajan, Page-Turner blog, The New Yorker