THE SWALLOWS OF KABUL

THE SWALLOWS OF KABUL

In the burning ruins of the thousand-year-old city of Kabul, death prowls, draped in a black turban. Here, a woman is stoned; there, public executions follow one after another. Under the relentless watch of the Taliban, joy and laughter have become suspicious.
Atiq, a former mujahideen turned jailer, wanders aimlessly, crushed by the weight of his own life. Mohsen, meanwhile, has lost all faith in his dreams of modernity. As for his wife, Zunaira—a lawyer, beautiful as the sky—she now lives secluded behind the opaque bars of her chador.
In this Kabul where madness lurks around every corner, there is no longer any room left but for tragedy. The spring of the swallows seems so far away still…                                    A heartbreaking cry in the heart of the night of obscurantism.— Alexandra Lemasson, Le Magazine littéraire