Новинки Атика Рахими

For every crime, there must be a punishment.

Rassoul's world consists of little more than a squalid rented room - strewn with books by Dostoevsky, relics from his days as a student of Russian Literature at Leningrad - and his beloved fiancée Sophia, for whom he would do anything.

So when he finds himself committing a murder, axe in hand, as if re-enacting the opening of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, his identification with the novel's anti-hero is complete: Rassoul is Raskolnikov, transplanted to late twentieth-century Kabul. Amid the war-torn streets, Rassoul searches for the meaning of his crime. Instead he is pulled into a feverish plot thick with murder, guilt, morality and Sharia law, where the lines between fact and fiction, dream and reality, become dangerously blurred.

Blackly comic, with flashes of poetry as well as brilliant irony, Atiq Rahimi's latest novel is an ingenious recasting of Dostoevsky's masterpiece and a transgressive satire with a frightening resonance all its own.

Kaboul, fin des années quatre-vingt dix. Rassoel retourne dans son pays natal. Son père, un communiste convaincu, l'a envoyé à Saint-Pétersbourg, mais Rassoel y a trouvé plus l'amour pour Dostoïevski que pour l'idéologie du communisme. Depuis le fin de l'occupation russe en Afghanistan, une sanglante guerre civile rage er Rassoel regarde comment Kaboul périsse a cause de la cruauté et la corruption. Il décide de ne plus observer sans rien faire, et d'apporter la justice à la société...

"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.

“For far too long, Afghan women have been faceless and voiceless. Until now. With The Patience Stone, Atiq Rahimi gives face and voice to one unforgettable woman–and, one could argue, offers her as a proxy for the grievances of millions…it is a rich read, part allegory, part a tale of retribution, part an exploration of honor, love, sex, marriage, war. It is without doubt an important and courageous book.” from the introduction by Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

In Persian folklore, Syngue Sabour is the name of a magical black stone, a patience stone, which absorbs the plight of those who confide in it. It is believed that the day it explodes, after having received too much hardship and pain, will be the day of the Apocalypse. But here, the Syngue Sabour is not a stone but rather a man lying brain-dead with a bullet lodged in his neck. His wife is with him, sitting by his side. But she resents him for having sacrificed her to the war, for never being able to resist the call to arms, for wanting to be a hero, and in the end, after all was said and done, for being incapacitated in a small skirmish. Yet she cares, and she speaks to him. She even talks to him more and more, opening up her deepest desires, pains, and secrets. While in the streets rival factions clash and soldiers are looting and killing around her, she speaks of her life, never knowing if her husband really hears. And it is an extraordinary confession, without restraint, about sex and love and her anger against a man who never understood her, who mistreated her, who never showed her any respect or kindness. Her admission releases the weight of oppression of marital, social, and religious norms, and she leads her story up to the great secret that is unthinkable in a country such as Afghanistan. Winner of the Prix Goncourt, The Patience Stone captures with great courage and spare, poetic, prose the reality of everyday life for an intelligent woman under the oppressive weight of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Афганец Атик Рахими живет во Франции и пишет книги, чтобы рассказать правду о своей истерзанной войнами стране. Выпустив несколько романов на родном языке, Рахими решился написать книгу на языке своей новой родины, и эта первая попытка оказалась столь удачной, что роман "Сингэ сабур (Камень терпения)" в 2008 г. был удостоен высшей литературной награды Франции - Гонкуровской премии. В этом коротком романе через монолог афганской женщины предстает широкая панорама всей жизни сегодняшнего Афганистана, с тупой феодальной жестокостью внутрисемейных отношений, скукой быта и в то же время поэтичностью верований древнего народа.

Útla knižka je monológom neznámej afganskej ženy, ktorá opatruje doma svojho polomŕtveho muža, zraneného v boji. Kameň trpezlivosti je podľa perzskej mytológie zázračný kameň, ktorému možno zveriť všetko trápenie, bolesti, nešťastie, teda to, čo nepovieme nikomu, a on počúva, vstrebáva ako špongia všetky slová, všetky tajomstvá a jedného dňa sa rozletí na kusy. Rahimiho kniha je smutnou a veľmi krutou výpoveďou o inom svete, inej kultúre a iných hodnotách. A najmä o úplne odlišnom postavení ženy.