The Patience Stone. This item is unavailable.The Patience Stone

In a story inspired by the Persian folk tale about a patience stone that will bring about the apocalypse after exploding from absorbing too much hardship, a resentful woman sits beside her brain-dead war soldier husband, talking endlessly about her grievances--and a dire secret.

Atiq Rahimi was born in Afghanistan in 1962, but fled to France in 1984. There he has become renowned as a maker of documentary and feature films, and as a writer. The film of his novelEarth and Ashes was in the Official Selection at Cannes in 2004 and won a number of prizes. He is currently adapting another of his novels,A Thousand Rooms of Dreams and Fear, for the screen. Since 2001 Rahimi has returned to Afghanistan to set up a Writers’ House in Kabul and to offer support and training to young Afghan writers and filmmakers. He lives in Paris.

Polly McLean is a freelance translator based in Oxford, England. Previous translations include titles by Catherine Deneuve and Sylvia Kristel (star of theEmmanuelle films) as well as the award-winning Secret by Philippe Grimbert