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Title: One of the Top Books of the Decade
Review: The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra is a heart piercing book about two couples living under the Taliban in Kabul. In one chapter a husband begs his wife to go for a walk with him and she finally agrees, only to have a solider abuse her and physically force her husband to attend the mosque, leaving her to stand in the heat boiling under a burka. The helplessness of both of them to protect each other in the face of such random brutality haunts me. A second couple is struggling to survive her illness while the husband tries to succeed as a policeman in an arbitrary system. His work scenes contained the tension I feel when reading about working in royal courts where the king is a tyrant. The desperation of people trying to live under the radar in a Kabul ruled by the Taliban is gut wrenching.
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