YYASMINA KHADRA is the pen name of the former Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul. He adopted his wife's name as a pseudonym to avoid military censorship. He is the author of more than 20 books, at least six of which have been published in English, among them The Swallows of Kabul and The Attack, both shortlisted for the IMPAC literary award. Khadra’s work has been published in 45 countries. He has twice been honored by the Académie française, winning both the Médaille de vermeil (2001) and Grand Prix de littérature (2012). His latest novel is The Angels Die (2016). He lives in France. The New York Times describes Khadra as, “a writer who can understand man wherever he is.”
"A surprisingly tender book. . . . Amid the terror a classic story
about love sneaks through: love lost, love imagined, love morphed
into madness." —The New York Times Book Review
“A novel very much in the tradition of Albert Camus, not only in
its humanism and concern with the consequences of individual
choices but also in its determination to bear witness to the
absurdities of daily life. . . . [A] chilling portrait of
fundamentalism run amok and its fallout on ordinary people.” —The
New York Times
“Beautifully written. . . . It puts a human face on the suffering
inflicted by the Taliban. . . . Disturbing and mesmerizing, The
Swallows of Kabul will stay with you long after you’ve finished
it.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Riveting. . . . Spare, taut, and pristinely clear prose . . . . An
uncanny knack for making moral tension palpable. . . .
Extraordinarily moving.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Stunning. . . . [Khadra] conveys the physical deprivations and
humiliations with a few startling details, but the book’s most
devastating sections explore the mental damage of living under such
terror. . . . [This] novel is a surgical strike against
fundamentalism more penetrating than anything the Pentagon could
devise.” —Christian Science Monitor
“Yasmina Khadra’s Kabul is hell on earth, a place of hunger,
tedium, and stifling fear.” —J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003
Nobel Prize for Literature
“A brief, despairing novel. . . . Khadra’s prose is gentle and
precise. . . . Makes a powerful point about what can happen to a
man when ‘the light of his conscience has gone out.’” —The New
Yorker
“Chilling. . . . Powerful, surreal. . . . A meditation on the
ultimate sacrifice of love. . . . [Khadra] expertly reveals the
breakdown of human relations in a repressive society.” —Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel
“I am so grateful that The Swallows of Kabul has been written, and
written with such relentless poetry and passion. . . .[It] once
more proves the power of fiction to turn our despair into hope, to
restore our stolen sense of dignity and humanity, and to desire
life when death seems to be the safest refuge.” —Azar Nafisi,
author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
“Khadra writes with economy, saying a lot with a little. . . . His
style is as spare and flinty as the craggy hills that surround the
city. . . . The Swallows of Kabul is for readers who wish to
explore despair’s deepest shadows.” —The Baltimore Sun
“Powerful, despairing. . . . Communicates a sense of urgency, as if
its creator knew he was on the verge of being found out. . . . What
gives The Swallows of Kabul its momentum is the sense of conviction
it brings to its most dramatic moments.” —The Oregonian
“Plac[es] the reader not only inside the daily rhythms of Kabul but
trapped, as well, beneath a woman’s burqa. . . . Khadra exemplifies
the novelist’s gift: he bestows an emotional life and voice on
those who have been alienated and silenced. . . . [The Swallows of
Kabul] is a necessary advance, taking us deeper into this world
than the reportage we have seen for so long now.” —The
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
“Riveting. . . . Thrilling, horrifying. . . . Khadra’s snapshots of
Kabul are the stuff of Dante’s Inferno.” —Colombus Dispatch
"[A] wrenchingly beautiful novel. . . . [Khadra's] strength as a
writer lies in his precisely passionate phrases, his psychological
probings, and the gnarled and twisted relationships he conjures up
between endless war and relentless theocracy. There is a lyrical
starkness to his prose that you just want to read out loud to
capture its searing rhythms and perfect cadences. . . . This is a
brilliant, resolute, elegiac novel that not only hurts but, in the
sheer beauty of its style, also exhilarates and creates sublimely
tragic moments you will never forget." —The Providence Journal
“Brillian[t]. . . . Accomplished. . . . [Khadra's] portrait of the
Afghan tragedy is unflinching, his lean prose and storytelling
skills unimpeachable. . . . The bleak portrayal of life under the
Taliban contained in this brief, straightforward narrative musters
the complexity and moral impact of a much bigger book.” —South
Florida Sun-Sentinel
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