Of minimal art in literature

The passions may be unleashed around this atypical Goncourt. There are two years we had an American and an avalanche of over a thousand pages, this year an Afghan and prose (the word is not correct, it is rather a "proésie") very collected, minimal in the sense of art mastered very conciseness.
There curiously in this duet between an Afghan woman and her husband comatose, a relationship which finally settled by the silence of the protagonists. This lack of counterpoint allows liberating work in women which is expressed in a long monologue.
On a literary level, unnecessary in my view to ramble on the Status of Women, on the war on Islam on Afghanistan. What is at stake here is the relationship of a woman to her man. And how the author, a man precisely transcribed these anxieties, fears, hopes and expectations all women, in my opinion the true value of this book.

From fairy tales, until the war, since the ideal father to Prince Charming, all the ingredients for a psychoanalytic vision rule .. Do not go into this reading. Similarly, there is Mullah fatwa, Quran, Kabbah, that would allow religious reading. Finally there is the absurd and existentialist philosophy that go to.

Do not enter these lanes, simply read how the author in a few not impressionistic, but minimal, raw, even abrupt, sets the scene, adds touches of color (the curtain, dresses, turbans), creates a rhythm (the droplets that fall, the rosary, the calls to prayer, dawn, the daily gestures, etc ..)
In the end everything is suggestion, in this story of such a force that shook the male player I am. Our certainties are nothing, life is a struggle, our defeats, our wars, our battles are all lonely, because only they can create hope. We knew of course, but the art of the author is to make a light condensed.

That's how I read this book, the story of a heroic woman (like all?) Who has found the solutions in his world to win his battles and never lose hope. And if it was a story of "resilience" to take a buzzword?

Goodies: sleek style to the extreme combining prose and poetry. A controlled but so much sense brevity. A leading art of suggestion. The constant flirtation with psychoanalysis, philosophy and religion.
Cons: There 'none go so when looking around the complexity of Women abundantly revealed (heroin, her mother, her aunt, her daughters, her neighbor, etc ...) to that the man further back, but was it not the intention of the author?

If you liked Kawabata ("The moon in water" in the Izu Dancer), Hemingway and his old man and the sea, or in another register "In the mood of love", you will love this excellent novel lot .