Jamil Jan Kochai: The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories. (2022)
Sun, Oct 09, 2022./noise/books | LinkKindle. Some of these stories are ingeniously constructed, such as the first one with its video game that encodes the past in fractal detail, enabling a sort-of magic realism to rub up against sort-of omnipresent surveillance: it's a twenty-first century USA reconstruction of 1980s Soviet Afghanistan in the mode of a Charles Yu thought toy. There are tales of metamorphosis (it's having a moment), and some spy-stuff that reads like The Lives of Others. However this collection, while better, suffers from the same limitations as his debut novel: the few things he wants to tell us (typically about war zones) are repeatedly presented, spreading the point, if any, thin.
Wyatt Mason at the New York Review of Books. Elliot Ackerman. Goodreads. And a little related to the title of the book: The Hajj Trail simulator.