Short stories · A way to begin
دشت قابیل
Not translated into English
Spozhmai Zaryab · 1988
Synopsis
Thirteen short stories, arranged under two headings, woman and life, woman and death. These are not war stories but nightmares on the borders of the fantastic, set in an almost deserted city that is never named. A fairground showman desperately searches there for children, a mad bookseller harangues passers-by, characters wander through nameless dwellings and absurd offices, a dancer shakes her bells, and a woman, Aicha, suffers the violence of a figure in a black dress.
Context
The stories were written and published one by one in Afghanistan under the communist regime and during the Soviet occupation; the volume first appeared in French, in Paris, from the éditions Souffles, in 1988, in Didier Leroy's translation, and was then reissued in paperback by the éditions de l'Aube in 2001. A Persian edition of the collection appeared in 2014. The Dictionnaire mondial des littératures reads in it a critique of totalitarianism and of the Soviet military intervention, and a voice given to women in the face of violence.
Who it is for
Brief stories, in French translation, to be read slowly. The absence of explicit historical landmarks is a choice of the author.
Prizes and reception
No prize found for the collection. Critics compare these stories to crystallised nightmares.
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