Taqi Akhlaqi
Taqi Akhlaqi was born in Afghanistan in 1986. Two years later, his family fled the civil war, seeking refuge in Iran, where they lived until 2004. That year, he and his family returned to Kabul.
Akhlaqi’s prose focuses on everyday life in Afghanistan. His first short story was inspired by Maxim Gorky’s Gray Ghosts (1913), set in a damp cellar and depicting a paralyzed boy and his alcoholic mother. He draws influence from a wide range of world literature, including the works of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Flaubert, García Márquez, Stefan Zweig, and Nietzsche.
In 2018, Akhlaqi published a bilingual collection of eight short stories titled Va Naagahaan / Aus weiterem Himmel (Out of the Blue), written between 2015 and 2016. Two of these stories explore the aftermath of Taliban rule, depicting individuals killed in explosions and others who, in a desperate bid for survival, join the Taliban. Akhlaqi’s terse writing style reflects his keen observational power, portraying the everyday horrors of life through his characters’ perspectives. His work occasionally features anthropomorphized animals, such as a parrot quoting Nietzsche, highlighting the question of identity—how an Afghan individual, much like the parrot, may voice profound thoughts yet remain unheard, reduced at best to a source of amusement.
In 2016, Akhlaqi was awarded a four-month residency at the Heinrich Böll House, marking his first experience in Germany and Europe. This exposure later inspired him to write a travel memoir, which was published in Germany in 2024 under the title Versteh einer die Deutschen (someone understands the Germans) by Sujet Verlag. The book received widespread critical acclaim.
His play Ohne Tee kann man nicht kämpfen (You Cannot Fight Without Tea) was performed in Krefeld and Mönchengladbach in 2024. The play explores themes of home, complexities of belonging, displacement, and the search for a sense of self in an uncertain world.
Akhlaqi has received several prestigious fellowships and grants. In 2021, he became the first Afghan writer to receive the Berlin DAAD Artist-in-Residence Fellowship. In 2023, he was awarded the Berlin Senate Fellowship Weltoffenes Berlin, and in 2025, he received the Working Grant for Non-German Literature for Berlin-based authors.
In August 2023, Akhlaqi’s debut novel Kabul 1400 was published in Farsi in Iran. The novel provides a firsthand account of the days surrounding the fall of Kabul in August 2021.
Today, Taqi Akhlaqi lives in Berlin.