Afghan Tales

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Set for the most part in Afghanistan, these 10 short works of fiction by a young Russian writer capture the scope of the Soviet experience in this beautiful, hauntingly barren land. Eschewing conventional narrative, Yermakov frames a series of powerful vignettes whose immediacy and raw passion recall war reportage. His English-language debut covers a wide range of emotional terrain: young men tested by battle for the first time; a Soviet soldier tortured and executed by Afghan guerillas; the love-starved wife who waits at home for her husband's return. The result is a rich tapestry of images. Dangerously bored by their long sojourn in Afghanistan, the Soviets indulge in hazing, become addicted to hashish and forget their own language, using a garbled mixture of Russian and Afghan words. Yermakov makes palpable the brutality of a war in which both sides summarily execute their prisoners, injecting from time to time mocking glimpses of the official Soviet propaganda that supposedly justifies the senseless violence. This visceral book captures the cadence of battle, the sounds of gunfire and the smell of fear, poignantly showing the reader why this military campaign has since been labeled ``Russia's Vietnam.'' ( June )

John Mort

Yermakov offers 10 stories about the Soviet Union's disastrous war in Afghanistan, beginning with several gritty combat tales that in their minute depiction of meaningless suffering bring to mind "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch". As were American GIs in Vietnam, the Russian infantry are unwitting imperialists, with no sense of cause and a low morale; they smoke hashish, pine for women, and prey upon one another. They are technically proficient, but the rebels fight "with insulting effectiveness." Sometimes those rebels (men) hide behind the veils that women wear, so better to spy or toss a grenade. Yermakov also deals with the home front, in stories that may be more universal: in "A Springtime Walk," a sensitive young man who has just been drafted takes his girlfriend for a walk deep in the forest, to a beautiful, primitive place he has never shared with anyone; they resolve, hopelessly, to meet again. In "The Snow-Covered House," a young teacher whose husband is fighting in the war grows sadder and sadder through a bitter winter. Then she brightens--radiating sexuality, as her male colleagues note--with the news her husband is about to return. Then the fateful letter arrives, after all, with news of his death. A sweet and brutal book.