The patience stone is the second book in my around the world in 52 books challenge ,its written by Atiq Rahimi and set in afghanstan .The story centres on a young wife as she attends her comatozed husband ,feeding and caring for him as she does so her mind drifts away into the past and what a brutal life she has had as the story progess she opens more and more to her patience stone revealing her innner most thoughts for the first time .this is only broken by the daily routine of tending the husband and evening shots and fear of rape and attack from marruading soilders .
the book was orginally in french and translated wonderfully by polly mclean she seems to have kept the poetic spirt of the book thaty so captured french audience leading to mthe book winning the prestigous goncourt prize who previous winners have been proust and littell .there is a lovely introduction by Khaled Hosseini
this is a truely thought provoking book thou it is only 140 pages long it made me hold back the tears at the brutality that is considered normal for females withinn afgan soceity ,at no point does Rahimi try to hold back and the story is so much more compelling for this ,to use a cliche THIS BOOK IS A MUST READ
She sits up ond returns to her place on the matress,next to the man’s head,and puts her right hand back on his chest .Begins another cycle of the prayer beads .
A scene from early on in the patience stone
the cover design is a lovely mix of a women at window with a flight of birds over laid over the first picture making a dreamlike cover for the book .The book is published by chatto & windus and is out on the 14th jan 2010
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