A Woman Too Many
A woman returns to her father's house only forty days after her wedding, carrying the shame of a marriage that has collapsed before it has truly begun. Elsewhere, a teacher discovers that exhaustion can settle into the mind as deeply as illness, while a photographer offers an unexpected kindness to a man who arrives at his studio burdened by embarrassment. In another story, political ambition becomes a form of self-deception, and in another, a man standing in the snow wonders whether anything of him will remain after he has passed.
These stories unfold across the courtyards, classrooms, streets, offices, and modest homes of twentieth-century Iran. Their characters are not heroes in the conventional sense. They are ordinary people trying to preserve some measure of dignity while family expectations, social convention, poverty, illness, and political hypocrisy close in around them. Their lives often appear small from the outside, yet each story reveals how much grief, hope, vanity, tenderness, and quiet resistance can be hidden within an ordinary day.
The collection moves naturally between dark humour and compassion. Its satire can be sharp, but it never loses sight of human vulnerability. Beneath the social criticism lies a deep concern with loneliness, identity, and the desire to be seen. These themes give the stories a lasting power, making them feel immediate even far beyond the time and place in which they were written.
This edition offers a faithful literary translation that preserves the character of the original Persian while allowing the stories to live fully in English.
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