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Indlæser... Seasons of Purgatoryaf Shahriar Mandanipour
![]() Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. ![]() 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. ![]() 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. ![]() ![]() The stories are all of sufficient length to engage the reader and most deal with aspects of life in post-revolutionary Iran which have made the author persona non grata in that country. I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program, free of charge. I would not have likely purchased it otherwise. Its style is not exactly in my wheelhouse, but if you are “well read” and have a penchant for literary fiction, this might be the book for you. ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
Hæderspriser
Fiction.
Literature.
Short Stories.
HTML: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST The first English-language story collection from "one of Iran's most important living fiction writers" (Guardian), "a playful, whip-smart literary conjuror: a Kundera or Rushdie of post-Khomeini Iran" (Wall Street Journal) In Seasons of Purgatory, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions. Mandanipour, banned from publication in his native Iran, vividly renders the individual consciousness in extremis from a variety of perspectives: young and old, man and woman, conscript and prisoner. While delivering a ferocious social critique, these stories are steeped in the poetry and stark beauty of an ancient land and culture. .Ingen biblioteksbeskrivelser fundet. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumShahriar Mandanipour's book Seasons of Purgatory was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Aktuelle diskussionerIngenPopulære omslag
![]() GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)891.5533Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages Persian languages Modern Persian Persian fiction 1900–2000LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:![]()
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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. (