Presentation copy inscribed: “Pour ‘Jacqueline’, [Syngué sabour] De l'amour de la poésie, impatiemment, Atiq Rahimi, 25.1.09.”
In Persian tradition, the syngué sabour is a “patience stone” to which one confides one’s sorrows until it shatters — 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. The language, written directly in French (a first for an author previously known in French only through translation), is deliberately stripped-down, dry and rhythmic, so as to convey the nakedness of a voice held to silence.
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 house within the “Gallimard galaxy,” and recognition for an Afghan writer exiled in France who, through novels and film, examines war, myth and the place of women.