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FICTION:The Patience StoneBy Atiq Rahimi, translated by Polly McLean Chatto, 136pp. £12.99
A WOMAN KEEPS vigil by the bedside of her wounded husband. It is wartime. The room is bare and the woman is praying. A child cries. Afghani writer Atiq Rahimi sets the scene as if giving stage directions. This is not surprising as The Patience Stone, winner of the 2008 Prix Goncourt, is an urgent, heavily theatrical work. It is an important and shocking polemic; it will outrage readers for the truths it reveals. The woman is tending a husband who has treated her badly, yet she risks her life – and, until she moves them to safety, the lives of her two small daughters – to care for him. It is a duty that goes beyond love; it is a duty bound by fear and anger.
