| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
145929
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
It has been said of Atiq Rahimi's novel Earth and Ashes that the author intends it to convey a loss of any vision for a better future in Afghanistan. This essay neither disputes nor affirms this, but instead argues that this tone of disillusionment is sustained for a specific purpose—namely, to show how a belief in the Afghan requirement of vengeance helps sustain cycles of violence in Afghanistan. No critical work has explored this key motivation for the writing of the novel; this article does so using a method of close reading that enables an evaluation of the role the reader is afforded as part of this endeavor, be they natives or outsiders to this culture.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
161483
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
In the years following the Afghan communist party’s bloody coup of 1978, Afghanistan has been devastated by conflicts that have killed and displaced millions: its people having accounted for the largest refugee group in the world during the 1990s. With his second novel, A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear, the Afghan writer and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi vividly conveys the experience of someone forced to begin life again in exile. In this essay, it is argued that, for this endeavour, Rahimi pays particular attention to the anguish and confusion caused by the loss of one’s sense of personal-identity. However, it is also argued that the author is similarly interested in the empowering aspects of such a loss; in particular, the opportunity for re-examining inherited understandings about who we are. As such, the essay explores Rahimi’s method of setting the debilitating and enabling effects of exile against one another. It concludes by maintaining that Rahimi’s intention, in doing this, is to reveal the dangers inherent in upholding too rigid a conception of personal identity; especially for those who have been divided from the land and culture of their birth.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|