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Poetry of the Taliban (Paperback)
Loot Price: R509
Discovery Miles 5 090
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Poetry of the Taliban (Paperback)
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Loot Price R509
Discovery Miles 5 090
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Total price: R529
Discovery Miles: 5 290
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The Taliban are synonymous with the war in Afghanistan. Doughty,
uncompromising fighters, they plant IEDs, deploy suicide bombers
and wage guerrilla warfare. While much has been written about their
military tactics, media strategy and harsh treatment of women, the
cultural and sometimes less overtly political representation of
their identity, the Taliban's other face, is often overlooked. Most
Taliban fighters are Pashtuns, a people who cherish their vibrant
poetic tradition, closely associated with that of song. The poems
in this collection are meant to be recited and sung; and this is
the manner in which they are enjoyed by the wider Pashtun public
today. From audiotapes traded in secret in the bazaars of Kandahar,
to mp3s exchanged via bluetooth in Kabul, to video files downloaded
in Dubai and London, Taliban poetry has an appeal that transcends
the insurgency. For the Taliban today, these poems, or ghazals,
have a resonance back to the 1980s war against the Soviets, when
similar rhetorical styles, poetic formulae and tricks with metre
inspired mujahideen combatants and non-combatants alike. The poetry
presented here includes 'classics' of the genre from the 1980s and
1990s as well as a selection from the odes and ghazals of today's
conflict . Veering from nationalist paeans to dirges replete with
religious symbolism, the poems are organised under four headings -
- War, Pastoral, Religious and Love - - and cover many themes and
styles. The political is intertwined with the aesthetic, the
celebratory cry is never far from the funeral dirge and praise of
martyrs lost. Two prefatory essays introduce the cultural and
historical context of the poetry. The editors discuss its
importance to the Pashtuns and highlight how poetic themes
correspond to the past thirty years of war in Afghanistan. Faisal
Devji comments on what the poetry reveals of the Taliban's
emotional and ethical hinterland.
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