"Atiq Rahimi attacks obscurantism, examines morality, heroism, guilt and achieves an accessible, captivating novel."
La Semaine

"In the light of the Russian teacher, Rahimi helps us to understand his native country in an excellent way, in a breathless, beautiful, strong, indispensable rhythm novel."
Le Point

With his lyrical yet stripped down style, his lavish use of Persian tradition accounts, and the firm exposition of his convictions, especially of the woman's condition, Rahimi composes a magnificent choreography.

In Damn Dostoevsky Atiq Rahimi is inspired by the plot of Crime and Punishment, but he reviews it, corrects it and translates it to the current reality of Afghanistan ... Rasul, the protagonist, has killed an old woman to punish her for the atrocious fate to whom he has condemned his girlfriend Sufia and to rob him and thus help his family and hers. Committed the crime, Rasul is devoured by remorse and guilt, but he also intuits that his act has something exemplary in the context of the civil war and the collapse of all the values ​​of Afghanistan, in a Kabul where brutality and corruption they are more than generalized. So Rasul wants to turn himself in to the police, to justice, but he does not succeed because his case is of no interest to anyone. However, by force of obstinacy and, later, of passivity, he will end up being judged in almost bizarre conditions, although very revealing of the disintegration of Afghan society and the religion that underpins it.