Search This Blog

Tuesday, 6 January 2015

The Honey Thief - Najaf Mazari, Robert Hillman

A wonderful collection of short stories set in the Hazara area of Afghanistan.  The author is Hazara and manages to catch a wonderfully guileless voice in these stories, a voice from another time and another life.  Some of the stories cross each other in time or with characters.
The effects of all the war and turmoil appear in the story, but they do not dominate - they are a background against which the characters must live their lives.
This book also offers a different image of practicing Muslims than you usually meet in the media these days.
Another interesting element of this book is the stories portraying a Muslim people living close to nature and in an intimate relationship with their surroundings - this is unusual.  It provides and interesting contrast to the portrayals of native peoples of North America and Australia.

The author's story is also interesting and worth checking out on the Internet.

No comments:

Post a Comment