The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons — Goli Taraghi

Rich in characters both whimsical and deeply poignant, humorous and real, the stories of Goli Taraghi have made her one of the world's most beloved contemporary writers from Iran. A best-selling author in her native country and widely anthologized in the United States and around the world, Taraghi's work is now made fully accessible to an English-speaking audience in this standout and long-awaited volume of selected stories, selected as a Best Book of 2013 by staff and critics at National Public Radio.

Drawing on childhood experiences in Tehran during the reign of the Shah, her exile in Paris, and her subsequent visits to Tehran after the revolution, Taraghi develops characters and tales that linger in one's mind. In the title story, a woman traveling from Tehran to Paris is obliged to help an old woman the Pomegranate Lady find her way to her fugitive sons in Sweden. In "The Gentleman Thief," a new kind of polite, apologetic thief emerges from the wreckage of the revolution. In "Encounter," a woman's world is upended when her former maid becomes her jailer. And in "The Flowers of Shiraz," a group of teenagers finally manages to coax a shy schoolmate out of her shell only to once again encounter tragedy.

Reminiscent of the work of Nadine Gordimer and Eudora Welty, Taraghi's stories capture universal experiences of love, loss, alienation, and belonging all with an irresistible sense of life's absurdities.