The Swallows of Kabul

Acclaim for Yasmina Khadra’s The Swallows of Kabul

“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.”

— The 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

“Places 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)

“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. . 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

“Riveting. . Thrilling, horrifying. . Khadra’s snapshots of Kabul are the stuff of Dante’s Inferno.” —The Columbus 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

“Brilliant. . 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