In a story inspired by the Persian folk tale about a patience stone that will bring about the apocalypse after exploding from absorbing too much hardship, a resentful woman sits beside her brain-dead war soldier husband, talking endlessly about her grievances--and a dire secret.
In a hospital in an Afghan city a woman sits next to her comatose husband, a tribal militant, most likely a Taliban solider, who has been gravely wounded in a minor battle. To his unhearing ears, she begins to spill out her heart: her anger at his treatment of her, her fury with the endless wars, her secrets and desires and sins. A slim but powerful novel that oscillates between oblique restraint and wild lyricism, Atiq Rahimi's THE PATIENCE STONE won France's prestigious Prix Goncourt. Its title draws upon the Persian folktale of the "syngue sabour," a black stone into which one whispers one's woes and tragedies--as the legend goes, when the stone finally cannot stand the sorrow and explodes it will signify the end of the world. Rahimi, an Afghan who found political asylum in France in his 20s, brilliantly transforms the folk story into a contemporary setting, and his novel speaks both to the current plight of his war-torn homeland and the universal cruelties of violence everywhere.
- Genre: Fiction + Literature Genres, Fiction + Literature Themes
- Subgenre: Types of Characters, Love + Relationships + Sex, Religion + Beliefs, Literary
- Publisher: Other Pr Llc
- Pages: 141
- Language: English
- Format: hardcover
- Release Date: January 19, 2010
- Date Published: January 19, 2010
- Author: Atiq Rahimi