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Yasmina Khadra
Since the ascendancy of the Taliban the lives of Mosheen and his beautiful wife, Zunaira, have been gradually destroyed. Mosheen’s dream of becoming a diplomat has been shattered and Zunaira can no longer even appear on the streets of Kabul unveiled. Atiq is a jailer who guards those who have been condemned to death; the darkness of prison and the wretchedness of his job have seeped into his soul. Atiq’s wife, Musarrat, is suffering from an illness no doctor can cure. Yet, the lives of these four people are about to become inexplicably intertwined, through death and imprisonment to passion and…
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Yasmina Khadra is the nom de plume of the Algerian army officer, Mohammed Moulessehoul, who took a feminine pseudonym to avoid submitting his manuscripts for approval by the army. He is the author of two other books published in English, In the Name of God and Wolf Dreams. He lives in France.
topAbout the Book
Since the ascendancy of the Taliban the lives of Mosheen and his beautiful wife, Zunaira, have been gradually destroyed. Mosheen’s dream of becoming a diplomat has been shattered and Zunaira can no longer even appear on the streets of Kabul unveiled. Atiq is a jailer who guards those who have been condemned to death; the darkness of prison and the wretchedness of his job have seeped into his soul. Atiq’s wife, Musarrat, is suffering from an illness no doctor can cure. Yet, the lives of these four people are about to become inexplicably intertwined, through death and imprisonment to passion and extraordinary self-sacrifice. The Swallows of Kabul is an astounding and elegiac novel of four people struggling to hold on to their humanity in a place where pleasure is a deadly sin and death has become routine.
topYasmina Khadra interview/review
Extract from an interview between Stuart Jeffries and the author, Guardian, Wednesday June 22, 2005
‘I understand that Taliban mentality very well. The landscape, the struggles, the hardness of life – all these are just like my homeland.’ He points to the jacket of his book. ‘Look at that photo [of a woman in a burka crossing a parched, desolate cityscape]. That could be the Saharan village where I was born…I have never been to Afghanistan but I met a lot of journalists who worked there who told me that they read the book and said, “I see these incidents all the time, but I never noted them.”
All my literature takes place in that space – it deals with that which has not been attended to. I wanted to bring a new look from a Muslim on the tragedy of Afghanistan. And to bring to it a western perspective at the same time – I have written a western tragedy, but also a book that is filled with eastern storytelling. When there are two perspectives there’s a better chance of understanding.’
topStarting Points for Discussion
- The Swallows of Kabul is a tragic story. Mohsen, Zunaira, Atiq and Musarrat all suffer terribly during the course of events described in the book. Would you say that the author offers a pessimistic vision of Kabul or did you find anything in the book that could be construed as hopeful or uplifting?
- Is Atiq a sympathetic character?
- Discuss the way that women are portrayed in the book and discussed by the other characters. The author is a man writing under a female pseudonym. How
does this affect your reading of the novel?
- ‘For him and everyone else death is only a banality’. The themes of sickness, violence and death run strongly through the story. How does the author build up a picture of a world where death and brutality are accepted as everyday occurrences? How does Zunaira’s act of violence connect with the other violent incidents depicted in the novel?
- Explore the theme of imprisonment in the novel.
- Look closely at Mullah Bashir’s sermon in chapter 8. Is the Kabul described in the book consistent with the kind of society Mullah Bashir is trying to achieve? Discuss the role of religion in the book.
Other Books by Yasmina Khadra
The Attack
Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Israeli Arab, is a surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. …
The Sirens of Baghdad
Forced to leave the University of Baghdad when the Americans invade Iraq, a …
The Swallows Of Kabul
Since the ascendancy of the Taliban the lives of Mosheen and his beautiful …
What the Day Owes the Night…
If a woman loves you, Younes, if she truly loves you, and if you have the w…
Suggested Further Reading
- The Kite Runner ~ Khaled Hosseini
- The Bookseller of Kabul ~ Asne Seierstad
- Maps for Lost Lovers ~ Nadeem Aslam
- This Blinding Absence of Light ~ Tahar Ben Jelloun
- The Good Women of China ~ Xinran