Ponte 33 Edition publishes Sadeq Chubak's book, Patient Stone.

Ponte 33 Edition for the first time publishes the Italian translation of the work of the Iranian author Sadeq Chubak entitled Patient Stone.

Shiraz, 30s. Gowhar, a girl forced to support herself with temporary marriages, suddenly disappears and the dilapidated block of flats where she lived with an assorted group of tenants falls into disarray. Her little son Kakolzari, abandoned to himself, continues to play on the edge of the pool in the middle of the courtyard, attracting the reproaches of Belqis, a commoner exasperated by her opium addict husband, and seeks refuge in the arms of Ahmad Aqa, a young elementary teacher who dreams to become a writer and is in love with Gowhar. Even Jahansoltan, a sick and dying old woman, now has no one to look after her and prays that someone will bring her at least a drop of water and a loaf of bread. The novel's plot unfolds through the voice of these characters, to which is added one outside the house, that of Seif ol-Qalam, a fanatic and misanthropic Indian merchant. In a series of soliloquies, each of them entrusts their most hidden thoughts to an ideal patient stone, a magical rock which, in Persian mythology, is capable of absorbing all the sufferings and pains of the speaker until it explodes.

Published in Iran in 1966, Patient Stone marks a fundamental stage of the Persian novel with its multiform and polyphonic structure that pushes the techniques of the flow of consciousness to the extreme and returns a multifaceted portrait of the human condition, poised between the abysses of solitude and an instinctive, tenacious attachment to life.

THE AUTHOR

Sadeq Chubak (1916-1998) was one of the most important innovators of Persian literature of the twentieth century. Originally from Bushehr, he studied in Shiraz and Tehran. An English teacher and interpreter, he was employed by several government institutions, including the National Iranian Oil Company. He began writing encouraged by his friend and teacher Sadeq Hedayat and published his first collection of short stories in 1945, inaugurating a literary career which culminated, twenty years later, with the publication of the novel Patient Stone (1966). In the late 70s he moved first to London and then to Berkeley, California, where he spent the rest of his life. It is said that, shortly before his death, he burned his diaries in the fireplace, in which he had recounted in detail the lively and turbulent intellectual life in Iran between the first and second Pahlavi periods.

Translation by Giacomo Longhi

Introduction by Ali Dehbashi

Cover illustration by Majid Kashani (Daftar Studio)

ISBN 978-88-96908-15-0

€ 16,00