Customer Reviews

A Thousand Rooms of Dreams and Fear

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This (novella-length) book is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, even though it begins with the narrator emerging from unconsciousness. Unconsciousness, induced by a beating from soldiers after a night of drinking, starts to be replaced with an admixture of memory and hallucination, evolving into sensation and hallucination, then consciousness with occasional hallucination, and finally true awareness.

There is no effective way to describe the narrator's thought evolution without giving away the plot. Suffice it to say that the plot elucidates briefly, as the length of the work requires, the constraints on freedom and human life imposed by the more extreme interpretations of Islam.

While never feeling that I was in the presence of great literature, the story moved along and kept me reading. The author is clever if not profound, and this book is a quick way to get a sense of life in a strict Islamist society. (While emphasizing that not everyone voluntarily conforms to the standard of such a society.)

If the general topic interests you this novella is worth reading.

I was provided a copy for review by the publisher.

When Jenn and Nicole announced their Book Club, I was excited to participate. Their first selection was A Thousand Rooms of Dreams and Fear by Atiq Rahimi and published by Other Press. The cover is beautiful and the premise, a young man on the run from the Afghani government in 1979 was even more intriguing. It is a short book, but don't let that fool you. It is a deep and intense reading experience.

When we first meet Farhad, he believes he is dying in his room and he cannot get his family to hear or help him. His mind runs to his fears of the afterlife and he tries to dispel the ghosts he believes are torturing him by using the superstitious prayers his grandfather taught him. What he doesn't remember was the beating he received the night before, out on the streets. Slowly, his situation and his unfamiliar location become clear to him. Then, new fears and worries take hold.

There was definitely something lost in the translation with Rahimi's novel. First, I'm not from the same or even similar cultures or religious traditions, so I could almost feel subtext and dialog fly over my head. Also, I believe there was a lot of beauty in the author's writing that is missed by English speaking readers. There was something about the structure that made me feel that way. It's not that I took issue with the translators themselves. There are just some differences in languages that can't be translated.

For all the cultural distance, I could very much relate to Farhad on a personal level. His gut reaction to imminent death is the strongest example. My religious views have been in conflict since I moved away from home, if not even before. With the current exception of attending Mass (mostly) weekly and seeing to my daughters' religious education, there's nothing else there. Despite the fact that I can't much be motivated to do much more than provide my children some semblance of religious tradition within my day to day life, I would worry about going to hell if I thought the end was nigh. We're worlds apart, Farhad and me, but his experience shed light on my own soul.

A Thousand Rooms of Dreams and Fear is a book I may not have otherwise read had it not been for Book Club. I am glad that I had the opportunity to read outside of my ordinary selections. I read it at the perfect time in my life, making it a rewarding read. I don't know that this is a novel for everyone, but it certainly made an impact on me.

In Kabul in 1979 Farhad, a 21-year-old university student, is out after curfew to celebrate a friend's imminent escape to Pakistan. After suffering a vicious beating by soldiers on patrol, a mysterious and brave woman rescues the unconscious Farhad from the sewer. A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear consists of Farhad's splintered memories and dreams mixed with his brief moments of lucidity as Fahad slowly returns to awareness. A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear is a disturbing and masterful depiction of the harrowing circumstances suffered by both men and women in war-torn Afghanistan.

I loved the style of "A Thousands Rooms" - the addled reflections of a man cruelly beaten by Afghani soldiers after a drunken ramble with a friend. Each chapter gives a slightly fuller reflection of the man's confused thoughts. Images - a jackboot, a violent encounter, an aching body, a guilty recollection of a sage's words - build into a story. But the story took so long in coming that the final payoff seemed anticlimactic. The trio of grotesques who took in the beaten man were just weird. If they represented something, I missed it. The quickly sketched ending was evidently intended as a re-entry into hell. But its ambiguity was unfulfilling. An interesting read, but not an author whose works I would seek out.