“The bomb was huge. It brought silence. The tanks took away people’s voices and left. They even took Grandfather’s voice away. Grandfather can’t talk anymore, he can’t scold me.”

Everyone in Dastaguir’s family is killed except for him and his young grandson, Yassin, who loses his hearing when their Afghan village is bombed by the Russians. Rahimi's first novel is the traumatic journey they both undertake to a distant coal mine where Dastaguir’s son, who wasn’t at home during the catastrophe, works.

The old man, numb, sunk in sorrow, wades through the vast landscape with his deaf and uncomprehending grandson, only to deliver the sordid news. We feel his fear; we get caught in his dilemma: Is it better to tell his son now or give him more time to live without this pain? Would it hurt him less if he hears it from his own father rather than a stranger? The long wait at the border and then at their destination is crueler than crossing the unforgiving terrain and finally all that’s left to them is a box of chewing tobacco and some unripe apples.

At barely sixty pages, Earth and Ashes begins and ends on a single day with much of the action taking place inside the mind of the characters. “The often spare and elliptical narration, and the very effective descriptions of the weariness and worry of the most simple actions and exchanges, work very well. This is a powerful, understated work – but in conveying the complete crushing of these souls so well is also horribly, horribly bleak.” (Complete Review)

Born in Kabul in 1956, Rahimi fled Afghanistan during the invasion of the Soviet Union and in 1985 relocated to France, where he was granted political asylum. “What is perhaps most terrifying of all is that this book is set during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan; this is how bad things were before the mujahideen and the Taliban,” said author Andrew Solomon in his review. It brings forth the uncomfortable fact that life has remained unchanged for the people there. The wars continue; only the enemies change.

Published in 2000. Translated from Dari Persian by Erdag Göknar, published in 2002.