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The Need for Vengeance or the Need to Mourn? Atiq Rahimi’s Exploration of “Afghan” Self-Identity in Earth and Ashes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
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.
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- Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2015
Footnotes
The author’s current research concerns fictional representations of Afghanistan in British, American, Russian and Afghan novels or films. He is a full-time Lecturer at the University of Phayao, Thailand.
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