A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

Rahimi (The Patience Stone) overcomes a stuttering start to deliver an original and utterly personal account of the pressures a totalitarian society exerts on the individual in 1979 Afghanistan, before the Soviet invasion. After soldiers brutally beat Farhad, a sensitive 21-year-old student, he begins to grasp the less obvious but equally horrific abuse of Afghan women by the patriarchal, Islamo-fascist order. When Mahnaz, a grieving widow, rescues Farhad from the Kabul gutter where he lies bleeding and unconscious, he must come to grips with his own father's ignominious behavior and with the drastic plight of women like Mahnaz. In a particularly imaginative twist, Farhad becomes obsessed with the elaborate carpets that are such a part of daily life, realizing eventually that these beautiful household objects are merely metaphors for the ongoing tragedy that is the existence of the women who made them. A flawless translation does justice to Rahimi's taut, highly calibrated prose. (Jan.)