Atiq Rahimi, writer

Atiq Rahimi was born on 26 February 1962 in Kabul, into a family very attached to classical Persian literature. He himself started writing poetry at the age of twelve. He was studying at the French-Afghan high school Estiqlal in Kabul when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on 25 December 1979. He joined his father in the protests and was detained alongside him for 19 days by the new government that was instituted on 27 December. After his release he was put under surveillance and subjected to threats.

He left his country on 7 December 1984, with his young wife, walking nine days to Pakistan. He arrived in France in March 1985 and was recognised as a refugee by Ofpra. He was housed in a reception centre for refugees in Gaillon, Eure, and decided to continue his higher education. He defended a thesis in audiovisual communication at the Sorbonne and worked as a documentary film maker.

It was the Taliban takeover in 1996, the year he was naturalised, that moved him to write about his country. He published Earth and Ashes and then A Thousand Rooms of Dreams and Fear, in which he recounts his exodus through Afghanistan. His fourth novel, The Patience Stone, which was written directly in French, won the 2008 Goncourt Prize. Un Dostoïevski en terre musulmane (A Dostoyevsky on Muslim Land) is his latest novel.

Atiq Rahimi continues to work in film. He has adapted his two novels Earth and Ashes and The Patience Stone for the big screen. Committed to peace and tolerance, he took part in the support demonstration for Charlie Hebdo and all the victims of the January 2015 attacks in Paris organised by Radio France and France Télévisions, in conjunction with the Ministry of Culture and Communication, where he declared:

I have a personal religion. I am a Buddhist because I am aware of my weakness, I am a Christian because I admit my weakness, I am a Muslim because I fight my weakness. And I am Charlie if God is almighty