Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:14:25.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

William Kingsbury
William Kingsbury*
Affiliation:
University of Phayao, Thailand
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Keywords

Atiq RahimiAfghanIdentityTraumaVengeance
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , July 2016 , pp. 635 - 655
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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.

References

Ahmadi, Wali. Modern Persian Literature in Afghanistan: Anomalous Visions of History and Form. London: Routledge, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aspden, Rachel. “Short and Bitter.” Review of Earth and Ashes, by Rahimi, Atiq. The Guardian, December 14, 2002.Google Scholar
Barfield, Thomas. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Constable, Pamela. “Dysfunction and Dread in Kabul.” Washington Post, July 17, 2011.Google Scholar
Engels, Frederick. “Afghanistan.” In Carl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works. Vol. 18, 1857–1862, 40–48. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1982.Google Scholar
Fowler, Corinne. Chasing Tales: Travel Writing, Journalism and the History of British Ideas about Afghanistan. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hensher, Philip. “Cruel Duty.” Review of Earth and Ashes, by Rahimi, Atiq. The Times, October 5, 2002.Google Scholar
Hopkins, B. D. The Making of Modern Afghanistan. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jawad, Nassim. Afghanistan: A Nation of Minorities. London: Minority Rights Group, 1992.Google Scholar
Klass, Rosanne, ed. Afghanistan, the Great Game Revisited. New York: Freedom House, 1990.Google Scholar
Mills, Margaret A. “Gnomics: Proverbs, Aphorisms, Metaphors, Key Words and Epithets in Afghan Discourses of War and Instability.” In Afghanistan in Ink: Literature Between Diaspora and Nation, edited by Green, Nile and Arbabzadah, Nushin, 229–253. London: Hurst, 2013.Google Scholar
Olszewska, Zuzanna. “‘A Desolate Voice’: Poetry and Identity among Young Afghan Refugees in Iran.” Iranian Studies 40, no. 2 (2007): 203–224. doi: 10.1080/00210860701269550CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rahimi, Atiq. “Afghan Culture Now! A Conversation with the Afghan Writer and Filmmaker.” Fikrun wa Fann 78 (2004): 7–9.Google Scholar
Rahimi, Atiq. “Dialogue with Atiq Rahimi.” By Maiwandi, Nadia Ali. Lemar-Aftaab, November, 2004. http://www.afghanmagazine.com/2004_11/profile/atiqrahimi.shtmlGoogle Scholar
Rahimi, Atiq. Earth and Ashes. Translated by Erdag M. Goknar. London: Vintage, 2003.Google Scholar
Rahimi, Atiq. “Literary Currents Series: An Interview with Atiq Rahimi.” By Fowler, J. K. The Mantle, March 7, 2011. http://mantlethought.org/content/interview-atiq-rahimiGoogle Scholar
Rahimi, Atiq. “‘We Became Trapped in This Self-Image, Until All We Knew Was War’; Books Interview.” By Feehily, Gerry. The Independent. December 7, 2002.Google Scholar
Rashid, Abdul. [pseud.]. “The Afghan Resistance.” In Afghanistan, the Great Game Revisited, edited by Klass, Rosanne, 203–229. New York: Freedom House, 1990.Google Scholar
Rasley, Alicia. The Power of Point of View. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 2008.Google Scholar
Rostami-Povey, Elaheh. Afghan Women: Identity and Invasion. London: Zed Books, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, Olivier. Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Roy, Olivier. “Afghanistan: Back to Tribalism or on to Lebanon?” Third World Quarterly 10, no. 4 (1989): 70–82. doi: 10.1080/01436598908420192CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, Barnett R. The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System; Second Edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Salvatori, Mariolina. “Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler: Writer’s Authority, Reader’s Autonomy.” Contemporary Literature 27, no. 2 (1986): 182–212. doi: 10.2307/1208656CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schofield, Dennis. “The Second Person: A Point of View? The Function of the Second-Person Pronoun in Narrative Prose Fiction.” PhD diss., University of Deakin, 1998.Google Scholar
Shamel, Shafiq. “Afghanistan and the Persian Epic Shahnama: Historical Agency and the Epic Imagination in Afghan and Afghan-American Literature.” In Afghanistan in Ink: Literature Between Diaspora and Nation, edited by Green, Nile and Arbabzadah, Nushin, 209–229. London: Hurst, 2013.Google Scholar
Vladislav, Jan. “Exile, Responsibility, Destiny.” In Literature in Exile, edited by Glad, John, 14–28. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Widmark, Anders. “Experiences of Revenge as Reflected in the Contemporary Pashto Short Story.” Inter-Disciplinary.net. 2010. http://inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/widmarkpaper.pdfGoogle Scholar