Shahriar Mandanipour – författare

An incredibly imaginative yet always charming love story set in contemporary Iran that crackles with wit, verve and social comment

''A brilliant novel about the complexities of writing and publishing in Iran'' Guardian ''Rich and riveting'' Irish Times''This important, timely novel is sharp, playful and zesty with life'' Daily Mail''A meditation on the interplay of life and art, reality and fiction'' New York Times''Mandanipour''s writing is exuberant, bonhomous, clever... powerful'' New Yorker

Sara falls in love with Dara through secret messages hidden in code in the pages of books that have been outlawed, but then something quite extraordinary and unexpected happens. Through adeptly handled asides to the reader, as well as anecdotes, codes and metaphors, and cheeky references to the wonderfully rich Iranian literary heritage, the novel builds to offer a revealing yet often playful and hopeful comment on the pressures of writing within the tightly prescribed Islamic regime, pressures that naturally are heightened where affairs of the heart are concerned.

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.