Publisher's Weekly Review
In this captivating collection, Afghan writer Kochai (99 Nights in Logar) paints intimate portraits of Afghans and Afghan Americans. In turns amusing and devastating, the stories are rich with vivid scenes and distinct narrative voices, and are mostly set in California or Logar. "Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain," told in an engaging second-person narration, follows a teenage boy in California who plays video game set during the Soviet-Afghan War in order to connect with his father, a former mujahid. In "Enough," an aging woman reflects on her past as she loses her grip on reality. "Occupational Hazards" tells an Afghan man's life story in the form of a CV, with overlapping pastoral experiences chronicled under "Shepherd" and "Grade School Student" in Logar in the 1960s and '70s giving way to a harrowing stint under "Mujahid" from 1980 -- 1981 ("Duties included: transporting a rewired Soviet bomb that had landed in the center of Hajji Alo's compound without exploding; avoiding Communist kill squads and Soviet airpower"), and culminating with a beautiful reveal. Many of these stories end in violence or tragedy, but on the whole, the collection is far from repetitive; the range of framing and styles keeps the reader on their toes and delivers emotional impact in one hard-hitting entry after another. Readers won't want to miss this. Agent: Jin Auh, Wiley Agency. (July)
Kirkus Review
A short story collection full of tragedy, humor, and keen insight. In his second book, following the excellent novel 99 Nights in Logar (2019), Kochai offers a dozen short stories focusing on the lives of Afghans and Afghan Americans. The collection kicks off with "Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain," the story of Mirwais, a young man whose video gaming session turns surreal when he realizes the nonplayer characters he encounters seem to be his father and other relatives in 1980s Afghanistan. The story is told in the second person, lending an urgency to the narrative: "You've been shooting at Afghans in Call of Duty for so long that you've become oddly immune to the self-loathing you felt when you were first massacring wave after wave of militant fighters who looked just like your father." In "The Tale of Dully's Reversion," the title character, a California student teacher who has lost his religion, finds himself transformed into a monkey when he steps in front of his devout mother's prayer mat. Following an imam's advice, his mother takes him to Afghanistan to fast at a martyr's shrine in the hopes that it will make him human again. Things don't work out that way, and the story ends in tragedy, though Kochai uses humor throughout, which somehow both leavens and amplifies the sadness. The collection ends with the stunning title story, about a West Sacramento family trying to hold itself together through financial difficulties. Like the first story, it's told in second person, but the perspective this time is that of a shadowy figure, perhaps a government employee, spying on the family and developing an unexpected fascination with them even after determining they're not a threat: "You should update your superiors. You should advise them to abort the operation. But you won't." Like every other story in this collection, it's brilliant and written beautifully, with real precision and compassion. Kochai doesn't make a false move in this book; like his previous one, it's a master class in storytelling, and a beautiful reflection on a people that have endured decades upon decades of tragedy. Stunning, compassionate, flawless. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Harrowing violence and transformative magic intermingle in this short story collection from the author of 99 Nights in Logar (2019). Whether they're living in their fraught homeland or abroad on the west coast of the U.S., Kochai's Afghani characters are haunted by violence. One woman lives in seclusion after her controlling husband throws acid on her face. A 16-year-old boy is slain by Russian soldiers, the pain of his death reverberating throughout his family for generations. In one especially excruciating tale, the eight-year-old son of a pair of physicians is abducted and returned to his parents, one body part at a time. But there's magic here, too. A captured American soldier turns into a sheep, thereby evading inevitable torture, and in the longest story, a graduate student's accidental transformation into a monkey sends him and his mother on a journey back to Afghanistan. With the abrupt and disastrous collapse of the Afghanistan government following the withdrawal of U.S. troops still fresh in readers' minds, expect interest in this visceral, timely collection.
Library Journal Review
Following up the Pen/Hemingway finalist 99 Nights in Logar, Kochai offers extraordinary stories embracing Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in language that's scathing, sharply whittled, and sometimes absurdist or even surreal. An obsessive video-gaming teenager, resigned to killing fighters onscreen that resemble his father, actually spots him and a now-dead uncle in a game and seeks to rescue them, while U.S.-based husband-and-wife doctors who have returned to Kabul for a year end up stitching together the multiple pulsing pieces of their son delivered by a kidnapper. In a single-sentence tour de force, a woman whose only surviving son is haranguing her for failing to take her pills shuts him out as she recalls her multiple losses in starkly vivid language that cascades painfully down the page. Elsewhere, PhD candidate Dully Abdul Kareem is transformed into a monkey while passing by his mother as she prays for two brothers recently martyred in Afghanistan. Mother and son travel from California to Afghanistan, where Dully eventually leads a revolt, in a story that effectively recapitulates the attempted occupations, insurgencies, and blood feuds that have pervaded the country for over a century while revealing how much family bonds matter. VERDICT An acute and original work bringing all readers closer to Afghanistan.
