Syngué Sabour: La pierre de patience

In a country at war, probably Afghanistan, a woman watches over her husband, who has lain in a deep coma for three weeks after being shot in the neck by one of his own militia. He was a fighter in all his country’s conflicts, and an absent and violent husband. She begins a long monologue addressed to him, making him, in Persian tradition, her ’syngué sabour’: a patience stone that receives confessions and absorbs them.

She tells him the secrets of her childhood, her arranged marriage and her life as his wife. It was the first novel Atiq Rahimi wrote directly in French.