DESCRIPTION The truth always loses itself among memories. The truth can be lost as though it never existed. Not on the ground or anywhere else. The difference between a historical event and an insignificant happening in the life of an individual is that the historical event has witnesses who can differentiate the truth from the fiction. One evening, thirty year old Afsaneh Sarboland, dressed only in a thin orange dress, flees her husband and home and attempts to create a new life. In the story, Afsaneh, a single writer, struggles to carve a space for herself in the chaotic soci... View More...
The Mourners of Bayal is a collection of eight interrelated stories centered around the people of Bayal, an imaginary Iranian village in the middle of nowhere. This work is a penetrating allegory of the manners, beliefs, hopes, and desperations of rural Iranians in the early seventies. The Mourners of Bayal is a very early example of magical realism. It precedes the works of masters of the genre, José Saramago, and Gabriel García Márquez. The most famous of the eight stories is the fourth (they are numbered without a title) which was adapted into a popular movie, The Cow. While away, Mashdi ... View More...
A man who doesnÆt recognize his own face, an aristocrat who keeps his amputated limbs in jars on the shelf, an infant that commits suicide, a cat that is secretly writing a novel, a rooster that rebels against fateùthose are some of the characters that make Bahram SadeqiÆs stories intriguing, incomparable and inimitable. Sadeqi is an original story-teller who depicts familiar facts and mundane realities in such a way that shocks us to the core and makes us call everything into question. With a subtle irony reminiscent of Poe, Kafka and Marquez, he engages us in an intricate quest to explore... View More...
THE CANNON is the first and best of Gholam-Hossein Saedi’s novels. It has an unwavering focus on a single character, the independent iterant Mullah Mir Hashem who is clever and manipulative. Based on historical events, the novel is set in northwestern Iran in the early twentieth century. It features tribal supporters of the Constitutional Revolution; Russian Cossacks who are backing the status quo; and Mullah Mir Hashem. The novel gives a glimpse into the tensions and machinations of the revolution, where each party is attempting to outwit, out-maneuver and otherwise deceive the other. For... View More...