Shahriar Mandanipour

This collection is an exploration of life in all its facets, set against the backdrop of contemporary Iran. Mandanipour's prose is generally pretty dark but evocative and introspective, inviting readers to reflect on the characters' struggles and triumphs. Each story challenges preconceptions and stereotypes about Iran and its people while offering nuanced views of how they contend with the peculiarities of their society.

While "Seasons of Purgatory" is undoubtedly a powerful and moving collection, I found its fantastical elements and the nonlinear structure of its narratives to be challenging at times.… (more)

This is a collection of short stories written by Iranian author Shahriar Mandanipour and translated by Sara Khalili. Although the author had to leave Iran and now lives in California, the stories are set in Iran during and after the Iran-Iraq war, a war Shahriar served in. The stories range in tone from sad to angry and all reference a loss of some sort.

The story that most sticks in my mind is King of the Graveyard, about the parents of a dead man searching for his grave in a waste field, always worried about being seen by those in the cemetery. There's also The Color of Midday Fire, where after a child is killed by a leopard and her father, a veteran of the war, reluctantly goes to hunt it down. There's a melancholy feel to these stories, of broken men and a country in which everyone is suspicious of everyone else.

It was harder for me to get into these stories than ones written by Americans, but that was kind of the point of reading them. I was pulled into a world I have no reference points for, although the language of loss and despair is a universal one.… (more)

I had read another book by Mandanipour before this, a metafictional novel, which was fairly enjoyable although I don’t think it completely worked for me. That one had a light touch, despite dealing with government repression. The stories in this collection all had an atmosphere of claustrophobic despair. The unhappiness didn’t generally bother me, but after the first couple, the stories became increasingly surreal. Some were confusing–a second reading was required–but there were a few that were disjointed and flat, and I didn’t care enough about the characters or plot to do a second read.

The first story, “Shadows of the Cave”, was the only one with some of the lightness of his novel, Censoring an Iranian Love Story. This one is a character study about a man who becomes obsessed with a zoo. “Mummy and Honey” has a fable-like quality and was probably the most straightforward and complete story. The claustrophobic atmosphere is literal here, as the story describes a family stuck at their isolated estate. “Shatter the Stone Tooth” was an effective tale about a conscript stationed at a small village who becomes increasingly obsessive and unhinged, but it was the start of a series of increasingly surreal stories. “Seasons of Purgatory” is about a soldier attempting to desert who is stuck between the two sides, but this one required a second read, although I did like it much more after the second read. “If She Has No Coffin” and “King of the Graveyard” were both too surreal for me. The former is about a young girl dealing with war and death and the latter is about an elderly couple looking for their son’s grave. These, and other stories, refer to the Iran-Iraq war–I think someone with a better grip on the subject might have gotten more from the stories, but in general, I didn’t find the historical elements too intrusive. These two were my least favorite stories, but the collection ended strongly, if, as usual, unhappily. “The Color of Midday Fire” features a character from “Seasons of Purgatory”, Captain Meena, as he tries to recover from his time at the front. Unfortunately, there is more tragedy in his life. “Seven Captains” has a long-ago unhappy affair as its central point, and the reader must decipher what happened and the relationships among the characters, including the narrator. “If You Didn’t Kill the Cuckoo Bird” was another story that I ended up reading twice–it is somewhat deliberately confusing, but a second reading is rewarding. This one also had a literally claustrophobic setting, as it is about the relationship between the narrator and his cellmate. Although the stories were generally depressing and some were too surreal, I’d recommend this one for anyone interested in Iranian literature.… (more)