The Torn Souls: An Anthology of Prose About the Soviet War in Afghanistan (1979-1989)

Editor’s and Translator’s Foreword

Dear Reader,

If you read these words, it means that you hold the book “Torn Souls”.

Before you turn the first page, I want to warn you — this book is a rather out of the ordinary collection of stories based on memoirs of the direct participants of Soviet-Afghanistan War (1979–1989).

This book is not for the average person who prefers to read a detective story with “soap opera” murders during their leisure time, although you will read about more than enough murders in this book.

This book is not for lovers of horror or thrillers, although described horrors in this book, will make your blood freeze and hairs stand on end; and cannot be compatible even with the most violent fantasy.

This book is also not for lovers of the romantic genre, although the whole book is permeated with imbued feeling of the highest sense of love for human being in any form and any manifestations.

This book is for very special people. It is written for those who are not stuck in monotony; for those, who are not afraid to be honest with themselves and who can take the burden of responsibility of others and, regardless of your bleeding soul, will carry the heavy onus to the end.

This is an odd book that raises more questions than answers about the nature of human kind in critical situations.

This book is the honest revelation of those who went through the hell called “Afghanistan”, and who, with their torn souls, maintained their dignity as a man.

I also want to draw you attention, my Reader, that this book is the first attempt ever to translate “Afghani genre” which just very recently landed on the lap of Russian literature, into English.

I hope you find the book to be a thought-provoking and a powerful experience, as I did.

P.S. Doctor of Philosophy Irina Vasilenko lives and works in Melbourne (Australia). She volunteered to face the challenge as Translator and Editor of pilot this project.