Earth and Ashes [Paperback]

Atiq Rahimi (Author), Erdag Goknar (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2003

Earth and Ashes is a story of such spareness and power it leaves the reader reeling. Set during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, it is a fable about war, family, home and tradition. An old man and his grandson sit in a deserted landscape of dusty roads and looming mountains. What are they waiting for? As we watch them we learn their story...Rahimi has managed to condense centuries of Afghan history into his short tale of three very different generations. At the same time, he has created a story that is universal in its power.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Random House (October 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099442124
• ISBN-13: 978-0099442127
• Product Dimensions: 4.8 x 0.2 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,235,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MASTERFUL ECONOMY OF WORDS, May 15, 2003

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Earth and Ashes (Hardcover)

Atiq Rahimi's short novel set during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan compresses an amazing amount of emotion, pain and loss into its 81 pages. He gives us an incredible, ground-level view of what war can do to a nation that is already poor (in material things, that is - the spirit depicted here is stunning in its resilience) and lacking in the infrastructures and other benefits we tend to take for granted - running water, literacy, health services. The TV newscasts tend to take a view rather like some history books, speaking in terms of armies and generals and referring to people as nations, thereby depersonalizing the conflict.

The author has done an astonishing job in conveying the experience of his elderly narrator, Dastaguir - the old man has seen his village destroyed by the Soviets, all of his family that lived there killed with the exception of his grandson Yassin, who has been left deafened by the explosions. Dastaguir, in his grief and desperation, sets off on a tortuous trek through a harsh landscape in order to find his son Murad, Yassin's father, and inform him of the death of the boy's mother and the destruction of the village. Along the way, Dastaguir wrestles with his grief (how to allow it to escape his heart); his conscience (how to tell Murad of the tragedy without destroying him); his sense of revenge and his hope for his nation and the world; nightmarish visions, hallucinations and memories that are too terrible to accept as reality. All the while, he must care for his grandson. The boy has no understanding of what has happened to him - he knows that most of his family is now dead, and he comprehends the destruction of the village, but he fails to grasp the reality of his own deafness. He thinks that the Russians have stolen the sounds from the world, and the voices from the people, in the attack. When Yassin finally asks `Grandfather, do I have a voice?', and the old man tells him `yes', it begins to sink it - his next question to Dastaguir is `So why am I alive?' It's a question that breaks the old man's heart - and one that he cannot answer.

On his journey to find his son, Dastaguir encounters several amazing characters. Chief among these in kindness and wisdom is Mirza Qadir, a shopkeeper. The book makes the point that every single person has his or her own story - that these are individuals, not just a faceless `nation'. They laugh and cry and love and suffer pain and loss and grief - and all of these are brought to life vividly in this short but rich work.

This is a story that will stand the test of time - and it is one that each of us should experience. I feel a heartfelt gratitude that Atiq Rahimi has focused what is obviously a formidable talent into blessing us with this precious gift.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "These days the dead are more fortunate than the living. What are we to do? We're on the eve of destruction.", October 8, 2010

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Earth and Ashes (Hardcover)

(4.5 stars) Earth and Ashes packs more feeling and more power into its few pages than most other books do in hundreds of pages, and few, if any, readers will emerge from it unscathed. Author Atiq Rahimi has recreated the Afghanistan he remembers when it was occupied by the Russians (1979 - 1989). He was seventeen at the time, and life has not improved much for the populace since then. Rahimi's bleak picture of the farming village of Abqul includes the occupiers' casual murder of individuals, the decimation of families, the annihilation of villages, and ultimately the obliteration of whole cultures going back to ancient times. Without preamble or any lengthy setting of the scene, the author introduces a main character who is faced with a family crisis from which he may never recover, then tells that story in plain, direct, and straightforward language which gains impact from its very simplicity.

Dastaguir, accompanied by his small grandson, is walking toward the coal mines of Karkar. The Russians "didn't spare a single life...The village was reduced to dust." All his family members are dead. Though little Yassin has escaped the fires, he is now totally and suddenly deaf, and does not understand why jujube stones which used to click against each when he played with them, are now silent, why Dastaguir will not answer him when he speaks to him, and why the world is suddenly so quiet. Dastaguir and Yassin are looking for Dastaguir's surviving son Murad, Yassin's father, who fled the village to work in the mines four years ago. Dastaguir needs Murad to reconnect with his son, especially now that Yassin is so desperately in need of help.

Talking to himself constantly through the miles, he takes a distanced view of himself, referring always to himself as "you." He imagines meeting with Murad and has nightmares which combine ancient stories with the events of his village. And when a shopkeeper tries to be friendly, Dastaguir has to remind himself that "You wanted to talk to anyone about anything. Now, here is someone who'll listen to what lies in your heart, whose look alone is a comfort. Say something!" Throughout the novella, the author calls to mind the Persian epic The Book of Kings by Ferdusi, which "interweaves Persian myths, legends, and historical events to tell the history of Iran and its neighbors from the creation of the world to the Arab conquest in the seventh century." Three characters in that book loosely parallel characters and actions in this novella.

For a novel in which the "actions" are mostly "reactions to" past events, the author manages to inspire powerful emotional moments. The reader cares for Dastaguir because he reacts with universal human feelings-he gets annoyed at Yassin, and he agonizes over what and how much to tell Murad. With these characters and Yassin inspiring sympathy, the reader is impacted even more fully by the bleakness of the ending-and the continuing hopelessness which we know has continued among the populace during the present war in Afghanistan. Mary Whipple

The Patience Stone

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Earth and Ashes, December 15, 2009

By 

Stephen Balbach (Ashton, MD United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Earth and Ashes (Paperback)

For the fans of McCarthy's The Road, this is the book they should be reading and which should have won the accolades. It's gritty, real and important - and no baby eating Zombies! Written in the Persian language variant of Afghanistan known as Darsi in 2000 (pre-911), it was translated into English in 2002. It's a simple short novella about a tragic event, the kind that happens every day in Afghanistan. Through the eyes of an old man and his young grandson we experience the trauma of war and the angst of modernity pulling the past into the present. The ancient code of honor which holds society together is falling apart and what is left to replace it is deaf to us, an unknown. Although written before 9-11 about the Soviet invasion, it could just as easily be about present day events. Because it is written by a native Afghani in the native language, his sympathy for his culture, the small details and mannerisms, are all enlightening and curious. Afghanistan is such a mystery, a land of contradictions, this short novella goes a long way in revealing some deeper truths.