Beautiful story of love and tragedy in war and life, in a short number of pages.

I wanted to read a book about Afghanistan. Well, this was so well written it was depressing. The insight into how life is like for the normal everyday people in this country struggling with a governmental, religious and societal norms. It lends a touch of humanity to the headlines that are splashed across the world media.

Unsettling but not as magnificent as Khaled Hosseini. Really makes me consider how easy it might be to loose my grip on reality under such a brutal government.

Wow. A beautiful, heartbreaking novel. This book fulfills the promise that books can transport you to another place and help you to understand what it is like to be someone who has a completely different viewpoint and culture than you do.

The first thing that I noticed about this book was before I even began reading it. It was originally written in French, translated by John Cullen. And the woman's name Yasmina is actually a pseudonym for an Algerian army officer. He used the name Yasmina Khadra so that he would not have to submit his work to army censors while he was still in the army. Knowing who the author of a book is is not always important when you're reading a book, but I found this detail intriguing.
The Swallows of Kabul is a story about two couples in Kabul under the rule of the Taliban. The book begins with an execution, another death that has almost no effect on anyone, as death has become so normal. War is the normality, and the Taliban has taken such control over everyone's lives that Mohsen, one of the main characters, has to convince himself that it was not always this way. He remembers being able to laugh in public, entertaining guests with his family, being happy. But he has not experienced these things in so long, they seem like the swallows of the title - they have fled with the arrival of war.
This book is a quick read. The almost 200 pages fly by. Yet it is not easy to read. It is tragic, the way the main characters' lives are torn apart by the week or so the story covers. In a sense, this is a book that mourns for all of the things that were lost because of the wars Afghanistan has endured: beauty, freedom, the ability to love, Kabul itself. It is a eulogy.

What a morose book. In another time I might have had patience for it *off to find something light-hearted and romantic where good things happen to good people*