This compelling short novel can be read in one sitting and takes you right into the minds of civilians caught up in the extremity and ambiguity of war. This is Atiq Rahimi's first book.

Earth and Ashes

Atiq Rahimi

Random House]

Syngué Sabour: Pierre de patience- Prix Goncourt (French Edition)

P.O.L.

A Curse on Dostoevsky

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Chatto&Windus

A resentful woman sits beside her brain-dead war soldier husband, in a retelling of a Persian folk tale about a patience stone that will bring about the apocalypse after exploding from absorbing too much hardship.

The Patience Stone: "Sang-E Saboor"

Contemporary

Blackstone Audiobooks

Winner of France's prestigious Goncourt Prize for 2008, and set in modern-day Aghanistan, this explosive, controversial and moving short novel, with a shocking twist, takes a compelling literary look behind the veil, daring to confront taboos of female oppression and sexuality. In Persian folklore, Syngue Sabour is a magical stone, a patience stone, that absorbs the plight of those who confide in it. But here, the Syngue Sabour is not a stone, but a man lying brain-dead. His wife sits by his side, resenting him for not resisting the call to arms, for wanting to be a hero, and in the end, for being incapacitated. Yet she cares, speaking to him, revealing her deepest desires, pains, and secrets. She speaks of her life, not knowing if her husband hears, confessing about sex and love and her anger against a man who never understood her, and who mistreated her. Free of oppression, she leads her story up to a great secret that is unthinkable in a country like Afghanistan. Rahimi captures with great courage and spare, poetic, prose the reality of everyday life for an intelligent woman under the oppressive weight of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. A hymn to liberty and love, The Patience Stone rises like a requiem, incantatory, unforgettable, magic like the patience stone itself.

The Patience Stone: Sang-E Saboor

"You know, father, sorrow can turn to water and spill from your eyes, or it can sharpen your tongue into a sword, or it can become a time bomb that, one day, will explode and destroy you" Earth and Ashes is the spare, powerful story of an Afghan man, Dastaguir, trying desperately to reach his son Murad, who has left his village to earn a living working at a mine. In the meantime the village has been bombed by the Russian army, and Dastaguir, with his newly-deaf grandson Yassin in tow, must reach Murad to tell him of the carnage. The old man is beset on all sides by sorrow, that of his grandson, who cannot understand, that of his son, who does not yet know, and his own, made even crueler by the message he must deliver. Atiq Rahimi, whose reputation for writing war stories of immense drama and intimacy began with this, his first novel, has managed to condense centuries of Afghan history into a short tale of three very different generations. But he has also created a universal story about fathers and sons, and the terrible strain inflicted on those bonds of family during the unpredictable carnage of war.

Other Press

WINNER OF THE 2008 PRIX GONCOURT Syngué sabour [sége sabur] n.f. (du perse syngue " pierre ", et sabour " patiente "). Pierre de patience. Dans la mythologie perse, il s'agit d'une pierre magique que l'on pose devant soi pour déverser sur elle ses malheurs, ses souffrances, ses douleurs, ses misères... On lui confie tout ce que l'on n'ose pas révéler aux autres... Et la pierre écoute, absorbe comme une éponge tous les mots, tous les secrets jusqu'à ce qu'un beau jour elle éclate... Et ce jour-là on est délivré.

Syngué Sabour: Pierre de Patience (French Edition)

Verflucht sei Dostojewski

Ullstein Verlag GmbH

SYNGUE SABOUR - PEDRA-DE-PACIENCIA

ESTAÇAO LIBERDADE

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Books by Atiq Rahimi