Atiq Rahimi

Atiq Rahimi
Atiq Rahimi in 2009
Born	(1962-02-26) February 26, 1962 (age 55) Kabul
Occupation	Senior Creative Advisor, Writer, Photographer and Film Director, Senior Creative Advisor, Moby Media Group
Website	www.tolo.tv

Atiq Rahimi (Persian: عتیق رحیمی‎‎) (born 26 February 1962 in Kabul) is a French-Afghan writer and filmmaker.

Atiq Rahimi was born in 1962 in Kabul to a senior public servant and attended high school in Lycée Esteqlal. Following the Soviet invasion, Rahimi fled Afghanistan, taking refuge in Pakistan for a year and then relocating to France in 1985 after receiving political asylum.

On completion of his studies at the Sorbonne, Rahimi joined a Paris-based production company where he produced seven documentaries for French television, as well as several commercials.

Taking time off in the late 1990s, Rahimi embarked on his first writing project. His 2000 Dari/Persian book, Earth and Ashes, was an instant bestseller in Europe and South America. A movie based on this book, directed by Rahimi, was awarded the Prix du Regard vers l'Avenir at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. The film was featured in 50 festivals, winning a total of 25 awards including the one at Cannes and a Golden Dhow award for best feature film at the Zanzibar International Film Festival.

After the fall of the Taliban, Rahimi returned to his native Afghanistan in 2002, after 17 years of exile, and used a 150-year-old box camera to take pictures of Kabul. Six of these photographs were later purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

In November 2008, Rahimi won France's most prestigious literary prize, the 105-year-old Prix Goncourt, for Syngue Sabour. Described as "sober and alive" by French culture minister Christine Albanel, it was translated into English as The Patience Stone. Rahimi’s fourth book and his first in French, the novel tells the story of a woman whose husband has been wounded in battle in a country resembling Afghanistan and now lies as paralysed as a stone.