Read This Book . . .

When I finished “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak,” the title story and last one in the collection, I had to take a moment to process Jamil Jan Kochai’s stunning method of storytelling. Like every good short story collection, each story stands on its own, but they also all work together to give readers broader themes and ideas. 

The first story, “Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” features a teenaged Afghan American boy mesmerized by a video game where the primary goal is to run successful missions in Afghanistan, shooting Soviet soldiers along the way. Another story, “Bakhtawara and Miriam” features women caught in the time of life of love and marriage, having to make the tough choices of who to marry and where that choice will take them. In “Occupational Hazards,” we follow a man who immigrates from Afghanistan to America, whose story is told through the different job descriptions from the various occupations he’s had over the decades.

All of these stories, and the rest in the collection, center Afghan and Afghan American protagonists whose lives have been deeply impacted by the war in Afghanistan. Whether it’s living through the violence of war themselves or being raised by someone who was, each character’s trajectory in life has been impacted by America’s War on Terror.

Kochai’s stories also carry a sense of the surreal or absurd. In “The Tale of Dully’s Reversion,” a student teacher turns into a monkey, and his mother takes him back to Afghanistan to pray to a saint so he might be turned back into a man. Characters make seemingly ridiculous decisions only to have even more absurd outcomes. But all of these events push the characters to new limits and move the stories forward.

It’s difficult to not become entranced by these tales, each more gripping than the last — I ended up reading them all in one sitting! So if you’re looking for  a must-read short story collection of 2022, this is it.