Écrire la guerre sans fin : le roman Syngué Sabour. Pierre de patience d’Atiq Rahimi

Abstract Atiq Rahimi’s Syngué Sabour is not a classical war novel, in spite of the fact that war is the organizing theme of the novel. The plot of the novel may be set in Afghanistan, a country where war has been a permanent and integral part of the people’s everyday life for generations. How is it possible to describe a never ending, dreadful war without making the writing sensationalist or pathetic? What kinds of language tools and stylistic devices are used by Rahimi to describe the violence of war? When words are not adequate for the depiction of the violence of war, what extralinguistic strategies can the writer employ? These are the research questions the article explores.