A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

(Paperback)

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Description

The extraordinary work of the Afghan writer Atiq Rahimi allows us a rare insight into Afghanistan. With A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear comes a beautiful short novel about an Afghan student seeking freedom from politics and religious fundamentalism. Kabul, 1979. A student wakes in an unfamiliar house, battered and bruised. He gradually recovers his mind to discover that returning from a night out he was brutally attacked by soldiers and left to die. Farhad, the tragic hero of this nightmarish tale, realises that he can now never return home- to do so would be to risk the lives of his family. As he waits for an answer to his plight he learns the tragic story of the woman who has saved him, endangering her own life in the process, and begins to feel an impossible and forbidden love for her - a love that embodies an angry compassion for the suffering of Afghanistan's women, and the yearning for a lost home.

Reviews

The novella is verbal photography...[it] seems the real thing...seamlessly translated -- Russell Celyn Jones * The Times *
A taut and brilliant burst of anguished prose...both a wonderful and a dreadful little book * Guardian *
A beautiful piece of writing -- Ruth Pavey * Independent *
Short but powerful...The beauty of the language lends this work a haunting clarity * The Herald *
[An] intimate gem of a story...bewitching * Scotland on Sunday *

Author Bio

Born in Afghanistan in 1962, Atiq Rahimi fled to France in 1984. There he has made a name as a writer, film and documentary maker of exceptional note. The film of his first novel, Earth and Ashes, was in the Official Selection at Cannes, 2004. He has written two novels, A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear and The Patience Stone. Since 2001, he has returned to Afghanistan many times to set up a Writers' House in Kabul and offer support and training to young writers and film-makers. He lives in Paris.