One of the printed review copies.
Signed presentation inscription: “Pour Maurice Nadeau, cordialement, Atiq Rahimi, 17.06.08, Paris.”
Publisher's wraparound band preserved.
In the Persian tradition, the syngué sabour is a “patience stone” to which one confides one’s sorrows until it shatters — thereby freeing the one who spoke. Rahimi transposes this myth into a room in a country at war: a woman keeps watch over her husband, a fighter reduced to silence, and speaks. Written directly in French — a first for an author who had until then worked with a translator — the language is deliberately stripped down, dry and cadenced, so as to give voice to a silence long imposed.
Awarded at Drouant on 10 November 2008, the prize was won in the second round (7 votes to 3 for Michel Le Bris). It was also the first Prix Goncourt for P.O.L., a distinctive imprint within the “Gallimard galaxy,” and recognition for an Afghan writer exiled in France who, through novels and films, has continually explored war, myth and the place of women.