Month Top Picks

Month Top Picks

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bruise

Bruise

 

Author: Elham Fallah

Publisher: Cheshmeh Publications House

Subject: Fiction (Novel)

No. of Pages: 224

ISBN:  978-9645571960

Awarded in Mandegar Literary Prize (2015), and Jalal Al-Ahmad Literary Prize (2016)

About the Book  

This is a different novel in the background of war that depicts the blackness and whiteness of this disaster differently and innovatively. This novel is about the story of a young named ‘Amer’ and a girl that loved him and about a strange destiny that war that is determined for them by war. The author in the present novel presents a new experience from a narration about the war in which he merges truths and lies. The setting of the story starts with wartime and continues until now. This novel is the story of a family that during these times encounters many events and incidents that have strong influences on their life and identity. The further the story proceeds, the readers face more incidents and accidents that are sometimes very moving. When the curtains fall down the spirits of the characters and their real face will be clear and the readers will find out who tells the right and who the liar is. In this novel war is the setting of the story. War does not enter people’s life and influences them of their volition. It enters people’s lives and changes them unintentionally and sometimes for reasons besides defending homes and the land of one’s country. The protagonist was not in the habit of participating in a war, he was after something else for taking part in the war, and it finally determines his fate.

 

 

About the Author

 

Elham Fallah (1983-Bushehr), one of the Iranian-awarded novelists, has been working in the fields of novel writing, literary criticism, and journalism for over ten years. She has published two story collections, six adult novels, and three adolescent novels so far. She is a columnist in the fiction magazine Kargadan, Iran newspaper, Hamshahri Fiction, Arman, etc. She is also a virtual lecturer of story criticism based at the Fiction and Poetry Literature Foundation.All of Fallah’s works mainly deal with women’s issues and the men in the stories are defined in the face of women and the positions they take. Elham Fallah has also published several works in the field of adolescent fiction.

Awards

-Ecchymosis, the novel won the 7th round of the Parvin Etesami Literary Prize

– The people’s votes section at the 11th round of the Jalal Al-Ahmad Prize and has been nominated for Ghanipor Award.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Blind Guitar

Author: Mehrzad Jobbehdar

Publisher: Narvan Danesh Publication House

Subject: Fiction

Year of Publishing: 2019

No. of Pages: 187

ISBN: 9786226924702

 

 About the Book

Absurdism is a philosophical school that states that man’s attempt to find meaning ultimately fails. That is because the net amount of information and the very wide range of unknowns make certainty impossible; and yet some nihilists believe that despite such a fact, one must accept absurdity but also continue to search to find some meaning. As a philosophy, nihilism examines the fundamental nature of absurdity and how people should react after encountering “absurdity”. Absurdism holds that human endeavors to find intrinsic meaning ultimately fail, hence they are absurd since there is no meaning in terms of existence, at least concerning the individual. It is the absurdity that human beings struggle with, and many people commit suicide or euthanasia to give meaning to their lives because they think it is the only way out. The play The Blind Guitar depicts many people meeting on Poplar Street. While the atmosphere of the play contrasts Absurdism with optimism, there are strawberries as a symbol in the text of the play and by picking them from a tree in a nursing home, it tells the people who have hit the wall, and “So there is still hope that they see strawberries as a remedy for their sufferings.” Sufferings that are intertwined with the tragedy of life. In Absurd Theater, words are repeated over and over again, and the writers of this writing style try to portray the useless and machine-like relationship of people in a dramatic way and constantly emphasize these absurd themes.

The book The Blind Guitar is a play in Absurdism style and tells the story of a blind man named Victor who plays musical menos on Poplar Street. In this play, everyone in turn bears problems and sufferings, sufferings that have afflicted the human body and its roots, and on the other hand, one wants to pursue a hope that has come out of the context of life.

With all his disabilities, Victor wants to be friends with others. He is a dignified and noble human being who is rarely found in any society. In the play, The Blind Guitar, Victor, after years of blindness and abundant suffering, is still eager to reach his beloved and the power and greatness of his love have been preserved. A love that is not perceptible to everyone and they do not understand its meaning.

Finally, in the game of life, one goes, one dies, one wanders, one lives but does not want to, one is born, one falls in love, one loses his love, one waits . . .

 

About the Author

Mehrzad Jobbehdar(1993-Tehran) became interested in storytelling as a child. She started writing at the age of 13. After vocational school, she graduated from Chamran Technical University in 2015 with a major in civil engineering. She changed majors as soon as she graduated. She studied psychology and presented her theoretical dissertation entitled “Study of Alfred Hitchcock’s works from the perspective of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis.” She worked in a mental hospital. Because she has experience working in a counseling office and a mental institution, psychology is evident in her stories. According to her: Every writer needs to know psychology. Otherwise, the works he creates are only reading texts and not analytical.

After many years, she never gave up writing and continued her work until she turned from fiction to drama, poetry, criticism, and cinema. She believes that any writer who has something to say should speak to the world’s people, and this is not limited to his own country, for the writer has lived instead of thousands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Honorable Mayor

Author: Ibrahim Hassan Beigy

Publisher: Neyestan Publications

Year of Publication: 2014

No. of Pages: 144

Size:21×14

ISBN: 978-964-337-797-7

 

About the book

The city was under immense suppression. There was not any kind of freedom and democracy in the city and the Mayor died. There was a tailor in the city who had read many forbidden books and was aware of freedom of speech and of human dignity. He was trying to make his poet friend the Mayor of the city implement reforms in the society.

   “The Honorable Mayor” is a sociopolitical story with humorous nature. To put it more simply, the author has used satirical prose to express the most serious, and perhaps the most sensitive political, social, and even economic comments in the form of a story to the audience. It is the tail of a large city that enters a new period of appointing a new mayor with the death of the past Mayor. “The Honorable Mayor” is allegorical and satirical. A novel that looks at the social, political, and economic reality in one of the neighboring countries in the language of parables that criticizes and expresses his corrective perspectives about governance and social code of conduct. The story is set in a never-never land, the characters are nameless and are known only by their social standing and job. Suspense has been used well in the story and the type of the (omniscient) narrator’s expression and prediction of the story pushes the reader from one chapter to the next. The eloquence of narration language, selecting chapters with attractive headings as well as a good viewing angle has helped the writer to be able to narrate a story with explicit and beauty and of course with fluency. A central message of this story is “the change” in human behavior and mental states.

About the Author

 Ibrahim Hassan Beygi is one of the well-known and experienced writers in Iran who has written for children and young adults more than 30 years. He authored more than 50 books and at least 10 of them translated and published in other countries.Hassan Beygi’s books are characterized by a simple narrative with theme of social affairs. He has published 90 novels, adult short story collections and children and young adult books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wolves do not Fear the Snow

Author: MohammadReza Bayrami

Publisher :Ghadyani

Year of Publishing: 2011/2th Edition

No. of Pages: 279

Size: 24×14

ISBN: 978-964-536-421-0

Wolves Are Not Afraid of Snow won Irans Book of the Year award in 200 

It also won the Book of the Season award and the top prize of the “Children and Young Adults’ Book Festival” in 2009

 

 About the Book

Daresi Village is in Ardebil Township in the middle of a valley with a shallow population. Yusuf and Fattah were good friends. Yusuf had a dog called Qarebash. One day Fattah, Yusuf, and Qarehbash went out of the village to see a waterfall when an earthquake struck. When they returned nothing was like before. They could only save Fattah’s sister and Yusuf grandmother from under the ruins. They were ill and had been injured. It was cold and snow was falling. The wolves, excited by the stench of dead, rotten human flesh got near the village, and Yusuf and Fattah had to throw Qarehbash in front of the wolves to get rid of them. Finally, a helicopter came for help but Sara was dead and Fattah could not believe it. The rescue team dragged Yusuf’s father alive. They never forgot that cold winter day.

The novel narrates about a small village in a valley enclosed by 5 families. The theme of the novel is nature and earthquakes. The story occurs in the village, an earthquake occurs, followed by heavy snowfalls. The main character of the story is 2 teenage friend of Fattah and Yusuf, and of course, with them, Wolf also appeared as a character and a strong role there. The main feature of the book is explaining the details of the scene of the earthquake and its aftermath, so the reader gradually comes to the depth of the story and finds himself in the atmosphere of the destroyed village and among the rubble of mud.

 

About the Author

MohammadReza Bayrami (1965/Iran) is one of the most successful Iranian authors of memoirs, fiction, and war novels for young adults and adults.  He has written more or less 40 novels, story collections, and novelettes for children, teenagers, and adults. He has always been a mainstream Iranian figure and has won tens of national awards – including the IRI Year Book- and two international awards, namely Most Valuable Bear and Blue Glass wearied snake from Switzerland. He has been a nominee for Swedish Astrid Lindgren Award for two rounds. The Children & Teenagers Authors’ Association in Iran has selected him as one of the five top authors in the country. Feelings, images, and imagination in the works of Bayrami enjoy special tenderness and honesty that can be visualized in the mind of the reader. His works involve beautiful fantasies that often consisting the union of art and great image.