The Swallows of Kabul @ richardeward.com

The Swallows of Kabul
by Yasmina Khadra
from Anchor

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• One of the Top Books of the Decade
  The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra is a heart piercing book about two couples living under the Taliban in Kabul. In one chapter a husband begs his wife to go for a walk with him and she finally agrees, only to have a solider abuse her and physically force her husband to attend the mosque, leaving her to stand in the heat boiling under a burka. The helplessness of both of them to protect each other in the face of such random brutality haunts me. A second couple is struggling to survive her illness while... more info

• Fundamentalism versus the feminine
  In the general sense, The Swallows of Kabul is a short novel of Afghan life under the Taliban, but (as with Philip Caputos' Acts of Faith) the real message of this political novel is more personal and more penetrating. Here is book made to question the logic of fundamentalist rule. Here also is an emotionally emptying story of how the central binding power of women has been systematically destroyed by Afghanistan's culture of war. There are scathing commentaries given to the women of Kabul -- the swallows... more info

• skip this one
  Skip this one and move on to The bookseller of Kabul, Kite Runner and/or A Thousand Splendid Suns. This book is cliche, predictable and uses murder for nothing more than shock value. Poor representation of Afghanistan. The writing style is good, but the story is thin and the character development is lacking. You'll regret wasting your time reading it.

• A beautiful downer
  Yasmina Khadra, The Swallows of Kabul
  This wonderful book is also a real downer. Khadra tells us what it's like to live a totalitarian society. You feel the oppression and see the violence and horror of living in a brutal society with an even more brutal government.
  The book hinges on a moment when an otherwise sympathetic character participates in this brutality. With this, his life unravels and, with it, the lives of those around him. Some of the other reviews already have too many spoilers so... more info

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