Earth and Ashes
Ratings1
Average rating4
15
Ratings1
Average rating4
"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.
Reviews with the most likes.
My friend, in this country, if you wonder why something happened, you have to start by making the dead talk.
Earth and Ashes is a short novel about a man trying to see his son to tell him about the death of their family set during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The author himself was born in Kabul and fled the country when the Soviets invaded, which gives his text some undeniable emotional authenticity.
The story moves rather slowly as most of the time is spent with the main character's inner turmoil trying to process the situation and holding the leftover strings together before confronting his son. It's written in the second person, which I love, narrating the story as if the reader is put in the character's shoes.
For being such a short and confined text, the few characters that appear are all very interesting and the text puts some interesting perspectives on how people deal with sorrow. It's effective and engaging.
