In a heady evening of taking sides, when the hapless news junkie in me had to be laid to rest, I am rooting for Atique Rahimi, as against Khaled Hosseini, knowing fully well it is stupid to compare novelists practically exiled from their country for last four tumultuous decades. There is hope in Hosseini, which I cannot handle in literature on a good day. It is probably the over exposure to the reader's digest model all around in 70s and 80s. It is mostly meaningless in our times finally, years after Baudelaire and should I say Charles Wilson.
Rahimi uses Dostoyevsky's murderous and of course the violently out of wits Raskolnikov and his deeply destructive anger as a metaphor for his protagonists in Kabul. It is both a tribute and helpless submission to the dark world of the Russian master not unlike the alleys and hideaways in Kabul and Kandahar. For enthusiasts of the late Soviet period and the assorted implosions, Zinky Boys by Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievitch is also recommended.