The novel frames Afghanistan’s layered histories as coexisting rather than superseding each other

Evidence

History is thus a palimpsest in the novel. The past affects the present, and its traces can still be seen by those who care to look. It washes over places, turning them from trade routes to military conduits; over times, in the ebb and flow of the Buddhist and Islamic eras, whose traces coexist despite Taliban attempts to expunge them; and over events—David learns of Zameen’s fate in a restaurant near the World Trade Center on the day of the first, failed Islamist attempt to bring down the towers in 1993. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 412

Categorization

• XREF: Author’s strategy of reading novels as evidence — this reading of Warlight-style palimpsest history connects to how his own chosen two novels layer colonial and postcolonial pasts.