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AFRICA & THE WEST INDIES Algeria Yasntina Khadra. The Swallows of Kabul. John Cullen, tr. New York. Doubleday / Nan A. Talese. 2004. 195 pages. $18.95. ISBN 0-385-51001-2
IN A TRANSLATION that preserves the stark poetry of Yasmina Khadra's French prose, The Swallows of Kabul explores Afghanistan under the Taliban while celebrating the human capacity to transcend, however briefly, the force of tyranny. Beginning and ending with a woman's execution, the novel limns a haunting portrait of Kabul as it traces the intertwined fates of two couples. A Taliban jailer and former mujahideen, Atiq grows soul weary with the futile slaughter of the women he guards and the incurable illness of Musarrat, whom he married in gratitude for nursing his war wounds. Former members of the intelligentsia, Mohsen and his wife,...