Atiq Rahimi was born in Kabul in 1962. He was seventeen years old when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. He fled to Pakistan during the war and was eventually granted political asylum in France in 1984. After the fall of the Taliban in 2002, Rahimi returned to Afghanistan, where he filmed an adaptation of his novella Earth and Ashes (Other Press). He has become renowned as a maker of documentary and feature films, as well as a writer. The film of Earth and Ashes was in the Official Selection at Cannes in 2004 and won several prizes. Since 2002 Rahimi has returned to Afghanistan a number of times to set up a Writers’ House in Kabul. His novel The Patience Stone (Other Press) won the Prix Goncourt in 2008.