THE WASTED VIGIL By Nadeem Aslam

THE geography of Afghanistan is a melodrama of mountains, caves and barren plains. The evidence of the country’s violent history is obvious — a large population of amputees, an architecture of mortared roofs and shell-shocked walls. Anyone can tell you stories of offhand depredation. The women behind the cerulean burkas let you know that the horrors aren’t over yet.

Josh Cochran

THE WASTED VIGIL

By Nadeem Aslam

320 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $25

Related

First Chapter: 'The Wasted Vigil' (October 11, 2008)

Easy for even a casual visitor to grasp, at least superficially, Afghanistan is a difficult place for a serious writer. The lessons of Primo Levi and Imre Kertesz — that less is more when it comes to rendering brutality on a monstrous scale — have yet to be learned by most of those who hope to capture this country in literature. Yasmina Khadra’s novel “The Swallows of Kabul” is thick with purple passages. Khaled Hosseini’s two best-selling novels, “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” are little more than exotic pot­boilers. Perhaps that’s why some of the most powerful recent writing about Afghanistan has appeared in travel books: Jason Elliot’s “Unexpected Light” and, most impressively, Rory Stewart’s understated account of his solitary walk across the country, “The Places In Between.” So far, the most intelligent fiction has kept a tight focus. Novels by Francesca Marciano (“The End of Manners”) and James Meek (“We Are Now Beginning Our Descent”) and Tom Bissell’s wonderful short story “Death Defier” all feature Western journalists as protagonists, English-speakers whose encounters with Afghanistan refrain from any ambitious sweep.

Nadeem Aslam, a Pakistani novelist who lives in England and has visited Afghanistan extensively, has now made his own bid for the fictional peaks. In “The Wasted Vigil,” he ranges across the country’s ancient and modern history, punctuating his narrative with cross-cultural allusions. Unafraid of political complexity, he is also unflinching in his examination of depravity — of torture, rape and gore. Yet his writing also encompasses tenderness.