A. S. GERASIMOVA

Candidate of Philological Sciences

Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Keywords: fiction of Afghanistan, Afghan women prose writers, translated literature, languages of Afghanistan

There are almost no women novelists in Afghan literature. You can name two or three names, for example, Kubra Mazhari (b. 1951), Parvin Faiz-zada Malal (b. 1957) (Pashto)* and Spozhmai Zaryab (Rauf) (b. 1949) (dari). Recently, my attention was drawn to a collection of short stories by various authors in Pashto, " On the side of the Road "("De Sarak per Gara"), published in 2007 in Kabul by the publishing house"Afganfarkhang Yun". Collected and translated them into Pashto by a young Afghan novelist Rana And.

The not-so-voluminous book contains six short stories by Eastern and Western authors, as well as one of Rana Andes ' own works, which gave the entire collection its name. We celebrate the appearance of a new female name in the literary arena of Afghanistan with the publication of the story "On the Side of the Road".

Rana And was born in 1985 in Kabul, the daughter of a high-ranking military officer. She received her primary education in Kabul and her secondary education in Peshawar. She entered the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the Kabul Pedagogical Institute, but before graduating, she joined the BBC Radio station in Kabul. She runs the program "Women and the Modern World" there and hopes to continue her studies at a selected faculty.

R. And did not ignore the Russian literature, including in the collection his translation of the short story "The Death of an official" by A. P. Chekhov, although it was previously translated in Afghanistan several times. I must say that she did a good job with Chekhov's text:-

* The official languages of Afghanistan since 2004 are: Dari (Farsi-Kabuli, one of the Indo-European languages of the Iranian group); Pashto (one of the Eastern Iranian or Pamir languages); and Uzbek (a language of the Turkic group). Dari is spoken by about 50% of the population, Pashto by 35%, and Uzbek by about 15%. However, in reality, almost three dozen languages of three language groups are used in the territory.

revod is accurate, it retains all the shades and nuances.

The story "On the side of the Road" offered to the reader initially caused me some confusion, since the story with the same name belongs to the pen of the most popular Pakistani writer of the XX century. Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955), an Urdu writer. Since the collection is p. Andes consists entirely of translations, except for the story "On the side of the road", there was a doubt: there was a mistake. But all doubts were dispelled when I happened to read a short story by S. H. Manto, published in his collection "To the Minaret" (Peshawar, 2004), in Pashto. The work of S. Kh.Manto has no plot as such. This is a monologue of a woman, the mother of an illegitimate child, a passionate hymn of maternal love.

The story of Rana And, a young Afghan writer, is based on a plot that is very common in Western literature, but carries all the signs and realities of the Afghan national life. This is a worthy example of a modern Afghan novel: a short story with a vivid dialogue and an unexpected ending.

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