Winner of Le Prix Goncourt 2008, considered France’s highest literary honor, this disturbingly powerful slim volume gives voice to the too-many silenced women living “[s]omewhere in Afghanistan or elsewhere.” Written almost like a dramatic play script complete with what read like stage directions – not surprising since Atiq Rahimi also happens to be an award-winning filmmaker – The Patience Stone would surely make for a powerful production. For now, you’ll have to settle for the haunting 142 pages, but mark my words … it’s coming to a stage or screen near you.
“Outside of a few urban pockets,” writes Khaled Hosseini of now legendary Kite Runner-fame in the book’s introduction, “the ironclad rule of patriarchal, tribal law has long denied women their right to work, education, adequate health care, and personal independence – all of this made infinitely worse by three decades of war, displacement, and anarchy … For far too long, Afghan women have been faceless and voiceless. Until now. With The Patience Stone, Atiq Rahimi gives face and voice to one unforgettable woman – and, one could argue, offer her as a proxy for the grievances of millions.”
In a small, bare – “[s]tifling, despite the paleness of the turquoise walls – room, a man lies on the floor on a red mattress, facing a photo of a much younger version of himself on the wall. Comatose with a bullet lodged in his throat but miraculously still alive, he is diligently attended to by his wife who feeds and cleans him, regularly administering drops into his unseeing eyes. Outside are reminders of war … gunshots, yelling, constant danger.
Frustrated and alone, the woman starts revealing long-held secrets to her silent husband … for the first time, she is the one able to speak freely. Remembering a story her beloved father-in-law told her, the woman refers to her unmoving husband as her “sang-e-saboor,” a magic stone that “you put in front of you … tell all your problems to, all your struggles, all your pain, all your woes … to which you confess everything in your heart, everything you don’t dare tell anyone.”
To her captive audience, she confesses her hatred of the endless, worthless war, her admiration for her patient storytelling father-in-law, her frustration over her abusive marriage, her disappointment with her oppressed sexuality, and so much more. When nameless soldiers appear at the door, she saves herself by announcing that she is a whore, knowing that the devoutly religious men (at least outwardly) will leave her untouched because she is considered dirty … until one of them returns with a nervous request of “How … m-m-much?”
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010
Google is continuing to do more than it probably has to in order to appease the dying newspaper industry, though its efforts have largely gone unnoticed. About three months ago, Google revealed Fast Flip, an experimental tool designed to make browsing through articles from various online news sources fast and seamless while also hopefully generating some sort of revenue for the publishers and obviously itself. The company is now saying that the initial results are promising and that the program can be considered a success so far. It’s not taking it out of Google Labs just yet, but it is announcing the addition of another 24 publishers and 55 publications to Fast Flip. 
Facebook is now at 350 million users worldwide and 100 million in just the US. At this size, demographic data becomes a pretty accurate substitute for data of the population on the whole. The results may still be a little skewed as several categories of people would be under-represented, but the discrepancies are getting smaller, as the results of a study undertaken by Facebook’s Data team seem to indicate. The team went out to determine how Facebook’s user base related to the general Internet population in the US when it comes to the representation of minorities. The study found that, even though there are still differences, the two data sets are becoming a lot more similar. 
Twitter has completed the first round of translations it announced a couple of months ago with the introduction of a German-language version of the site. It is the last of the FIGS ( French, Italian, German and Spanish) languages it initially set out to release and the last translation for 2009 apparently. It has been available in just English and Japanese for quite a while, but has recently introduced Italian, French, and Spanish versions of the site. 
