Earth and Ashes

Born in Kabul in 1962, Atiq Rahimi was seventeen years old when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. He fled to Pakistan during the war and eventually applied and was granted political asylum in France in 1984. Studying at the Sorbonne, he received a doctorate in audio-visual communications. After the fall of the Taliban in 2002, Rahimi returned to Afghanistan where he filmed an adaptation of Earth and Ashes. There he has become renowned as a maker of documentary and feature films, and as a writer. The film of Earth and Ashes was in the Official Selection at Cannes in 2004 and won a number of prizes. Since 2001 Rahimi has returned to Afghanistan a number of times to set up a Writers' House in Kabul and offer support and training to young. His novel The Patience Stone (Other Press) won the Prix Goncourt in 2008.