Sutra and Other Stories — Simin Daneshvar

Here are six stories by one of Iran's greatest contemporary writers, rare and intimate glimpses into the lives of ordinary Iranian men and women; windows into the Persian soul. From the delicately painted tragedy of Mehrangiz in A City Like Paradise to the wry comedy of Anis, from two sisters' surreal nocturne in Childbirth to a village boy's broken dreams in Potshards, from a young woman torn between duty and passion in Bibi Shahrbanu to the brilliant and numinous Sutra, each story is told with the detail, clarity of vision, and deeply human compassion characteristic of Daneshvar's finest work. Daneshvar's Iran is a landscape in which the medieval and the modern coexist uneasily. Against this backdrop, the author explores the persistent themes of her nearly five decades as a writer: themes of sexual and racial identity, the social relations of wealth and poverty, the workings of memory and dreams. The lives of her characters-here, some of her most subtly realized-are determined by conditions and norms over which they have little or no control; still, in the end, Sutra offers a vision of hope. These stories are a major addition to Daneshvar's works in translation, Daneshvar's Playhouse and Savushun.