Book Category: Afghanistan

When the Moon Is Low

Nadia Hashimi’s When the Moon Is Low is a deeply moving novel that traces the harrowing journey of an Afghan family forced to flee their homeland in search of safety and a better life. Following Fereiba, a widow navigating the treacherous refugee routes of Europe with her children, the story…

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

Nadia Hashimi’s debut novel is a sweeping, emotionally resonant story that weaves together two timelines and two women separated by a century, yet bound by the same desperate longing for freedom. Set in Afghanistan, the novel follows Rahima, a young girl in contemporary Kabul who is dressed as a boy…

A Curse on Dostoevsky

A Curse on Dostoevsky by Atiq Rahimi is a haunting and intellectually daring novel that positions Afghan literature in conversation with one of the great traditions of Western fiction. Originally written in French and translated into English by Julia Older, the novel follows Rassoul, a young Afghan student of Russian…

Earth and Ashes

Atiq Rahimi’s Earth and Ashes is a devastating and quietly magnificent novella that distills the tragedy of war into its most intimate and unbearable form. Originally written in Dari and later translated into English, this slender yet profoundly powerful work follows an old man, Dastaguir, and his young grandson as…

The Patience Stone

Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone, winner of the Prix Goncourt in 2008, is a devastating and quietly radical work of fiction — spare in form yet enormous in emotional weight. Originally written in French by the Afghan-born author, the novel unfolds almost entirely in a single room, where a woman…

A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

Atiq Rahimi’s A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear is a slender, devastating book that carries the weight of an entire nation within its spare pages. Set in Kabul on the trembling eve of the Soviet invasion in 1979, the novella follows Farhad, a young student who is beaten senseless…

And the Mountains Echoed

There is a Afghan proverb — unwritten, perhaps, but felt — that the land remembers what its people are forced to forget. Khaled Hosseini’s third

The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner is the debut novel of Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini, published in 2003 by Riverhead Books.

Kabul Blues

Kabul Blues is a short story collection by Aziz Hakimi, whose literary voice has been shaped by decades of living through — and reporting on — one of the world’s most turbulent regions.