99 Nights in Logar

October 22, 2018
Kochai’s debut is an imaginative, enthralling, and lyrical exploration of coming home—and coming-of-age—set amid the political tensions of modern Afghanistan. Twelve-year-old Marwand returns to his family’s village of Logar in 2005—and on the very first day, has the tip of his index finger bitten off by the compound’s fearsome guard dog, Budabash. Marwand, with his cousin, two “little uncles,” and younger brother, then vow “jihad against Budabash”—as soon as they can find the runaway hound. The seemingly Huck Finn–like tale, however, slowly evolves into a mesmerizing collection of stories, first narrated by Marwand (who recounts the vicious beating he gave an old mutt when the family first settled in Afghanistan in 1999) and set against the backdrop of a war-torn region. Through nightly conversations in the family compound, Marwand discovers that talk “always seemed to circle back to war.” His 99-day-long search for the devil dog Budabash is filled with the stories of events both real and imagined: a family wedding, a mysterious illness that takes down the household, and finally the dreamlike clash between Marwand and Budabash. Kochai is a masterful storyteller, and will leave readers eager for the next tale.

December 15, 2018
An absorbing portrait of life in contemporary Afghanistan that is simultaneously raucous and heart-rending, told from a perspective we rarely hear: that of a young émigré returning home to his war-torn country.In his debut novel, Kochai tells the story of Marwand, a 12-year-old whose family has returned to their home province of Logar, just south of American-occupied Kabul, at the height of the war on terror. Marwand hasn't been to his ancestral home since he was 6; he's an American boy who barely knows life in Logar. Worse, the landscape feels like anything but home: American bases and checkpoints pockmark the land as the central government in Kabul tries to tamp down a raging insurgency, and Taliban fighters roam Logar with impunity. Holed up in his mother's family compound and looking for some comfort, Marwand tries to pet the family dog, Budabash--only to find the wolflike animal less agreeable than the dogs he's used to in America. Budabash bites off a bit of his finger and runs away. Convinced that Budabash is a demon in disguise, Marwand sets out with a band of cousins to track the dog down and bring him back home. But that plot is really just an excuse for an extravagant outpouring of storytelling: Marwand encounters an enormous cast of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, all of whom have stories to tell about their family and the bloody history of the land they call home. The result is a novel that reads like a thrilling collision of Huckleberry Finn, Boccacio's The Decameron, and One Thousand and One Nights. As it careens between tragic stories of Afghanistan's history of perpetual warfare and magical realist tales of djinn, the novel threatens to become unwieldy at times, but Marwand is the thread that holds it together. Endowed with a voice that is at once street-smart and innocent, the boy speaks a language that is distinctly Afghan but retains the marks of his life as an American preteen. When his little brother, Gwora, demands to follow Marwand and his cousins on their quest to find Budabash, Marwand beats him into submission: "After the whupping, I left him in the orchard all crumpled up," he boasts, ."..while me and the rest of the fellahs headed out onto the roads of Logar to search all day long for the wolf-dog who, just a few weeks ago, had bitten the tip off my index finger." Marwand's is the voice of an American kid who speaks a bit of Pakhto and whose favorite word happens to be "Wallah!" When Marwand and his cousins hide on top of a roof of the compound to eavesdrop on a conversation or don burqas so they can sneak into a bride's wedding party in search of a cousin's betrothed, the book seems like the very echo of Huckleberry Finn. With beautiful prose that encompasses the brutality of life in Afghanistan without overshadowing the warmth of family, culture, and storytelling, Kochai delivers a gorgeous and kaleidoscopic portrait of a land we're used to seeing through a single, insufficient lens: the war on terror.A vivid and moving novel about heritage, history, and the family bonds that transcend culture.

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November 1, 2018
Kochai's debut chronicles the adventures of 12-year-old Marwand on a summer trip from the U.S. to the village of Logar, in Afghanistan, to visit family. Marwand quickly falls in with his two young uncles, Gul and Dawood, and his cousin Zia, and runs afoul of the family's guard dog, Budabash, who he tormented on a visit six years prior. Budabash lashes out at Marwand, biting off the tip of one of his fingers, and then runs off. Marwand, Gul, Dawood, and Zia set off to find the dog, venturing out into an Afghanistan still overrun with American soldiers and the resurgent Taliban. Along the way, the boys both hear and recount stories, painting a portrait of a country beset by occupying forces and internal unrest yet buoyed by a rich cultural history and a resilient population. Kochai captures the joys and the sorrows of life in Afghanistan, offering readers a glimpse into everyday life in a country whose people have grown so used to constant bombardment that they can differentiate between various types of IEDs by sound alone.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

DEBUT Part coming-of-age story and part contemporary history of Afghanistan, Kochai's debut novel is told in an episodic style reminiscent of The Arabian Nights. When 12-year-old Marwand returns to Afghanistan with his parents and brothers to see extended family, his first order of business is to visit the compound's menacing guard dog, Budabesh, who clearly has not forgotten a previous beating by Marwand and proceeds to bite off half of his index finger. The dog then escapes. From there the story is ostensibly about Marwand's search for the animal, but it eventually evolves into a picaresque tale, with Marwand and his crew encountering a cast of eccentric characters and landing in precarious, sometimes violent situations. What is real and what is imagined can be hard to ascertain. In the end, this is a work about family. Though war stains most of their shared history, their allegiance to one another stays constant. VERDICT While the writing is beautiful throughout, this novel ultimately asks a lot of the reader. Its chimerical nature may be a bit off-putting, and several scenes of animal cruelty can be tough to read. Still, libraries specializing in world literature will want to have this on hand as a fine example of the meeting of modern and traditional storytelling. [See Prepub Alert, 7/9/18.]--Stephen Schmidt, Greenwich Lib., CT