Short stories
مد و مه
Not translated into English
Ebrahim Golestan · 1969
Synopsis
Three narratives. In the first, a long one, a boy from a large, numerous and well-off house in Shiraz relives his memories of his father and of the servant who takes him to school every day, with the accent of Shiraz. In the second, a man on a landing stage, beside a police officer, in the dampness rising from the river and the sea, sees the injustices of the past return: a tormented simple-minded girl, ill-treated old men. In the last, very brief, a customer at an airport bar tries to recall in which country, during the war, he has already seen the waiter.
Context
The collection appeared in June 1969, in the month of Khordad 1348, after the death of Forough Farrokhzad. The Encyclopaedia Iranica places in this book and in the previous one, from 1967, the moment when the author, after years of trying, finally found a voice and style of his own. The critic Ahmad Aram sees in the first and second stories a kind of manifesto of the modern Persian short story of the sixties. After the revolution, the collection was banned from reprinting; only the first story reappeared, as a separate volume, from Baztab Negar.
Who it is for
Three stories, a little over two hundred pages, in Persian. It is worth knowing that the prose, rhythmic and close to poetry, matters as much as what it tells.
Prizes and reception
The story that gives the collection its title is considered, according to the critics, its author's best.