Seasons of Purgatory

A hauntingly nuanced and provocatively impressive collection.

— World Literature Today

Cause for celebration. . . . Mandanipour provides readers with a vivid and idiosyncratic map of [Iran’s] people and places, effortlessly translated by Sara Khalili whose close collaboration with the author is palpable on every gleaming, blade-sharp page.

— Chicago Review of Books

Read[s] like dispatches from the front. . . . [Mandanipour] sifts through military conflict, the repression of women, the forbidden graves of the state-executed, and the shattered minds of children. Storytelling and remembering are subversive acts when power benefits from forgetting.

— Los Angeles Review of Books

Bewitching and disorienting. . . . Mandanipour has been compared to Milan Kundera and to the artist M.C. Escher for the way his fictions require the reader to put them together like a puzzle. . . . The stories in Seasons of Purgatory are stunning.

— Washington Independent Review of Books

Each mesmerizing story . . . put[s] us into a state of disequilibrium in a way that highlights the complexities of the human experience in the fallout of war and revolution.

— Litro Magazine

Enchanting, unnerving, and resonant. . . . The prose is beautiful, the characters feel real, and the situations they find themselves in are haunting.

— Shelf Unbound

Mandanipour respects his reader by esteeming resonance over facile moralism or plot-shock. . . . The psyche in his stories gnaws at an actual world and eludes purgatory for the moment by giving that world an obsessively resonant sound, rendered with a keen ear for urgency and strife by translator Sara Khalili.

— On the Seawall

Rich with enigma, asking to be read, then read again.

— Full Stop

Stunning. . . . Deserves a much wider readership.

— Literary Hub

A must read for lovers of the short story.

— North of Oxford

A scorchingly beautiful collection in elegant, icepick-sharp prose.

— Library Journal (starred review)

While the turmoil and danger of everyday life in Iran are the backdrop, Mandanipour focuses on the personal struggles of the characters and their hardscrabble lives. . . . These haunting, urgent works are as nuanced and provocative as the lives they depict.

— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Seasons of Purgatory is a stunning collection of stories about Iran’s traditions, its violent recent history, and how the memory of both influences daily life.

— Foreword Reviews (starred review)

Dostoyevskian in their density and black humor, Mandanipour’s stories capture the Iranian experience of constant upheaval in a brilliant translation that allows the English-speaking world to experience this gem of Iranian literature.

— Booklist

Altogether subversive. . . . [Mandanipour is] a skilled storyteller with a bent for the quietly macabre and the burdens of those crushed by totalitarian rule.

— Kirkus Reviews

A remarkable writer. . . . At once beautiful and horrific, Mandanipour’s tales reveal a people with dreams, fears and hopes; a culture that is ancient yet struggling to be a part of today’s world.

— Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore (Spokane, WA)

Vivid. . . . Each of the stories evokes a primal emotional response in some way or another, which makes this a fascinating read.

— Stuart McCommon, novel. (Memphis, TN)

Smart and dynamic stories. . . . Textured, intricate, and thought-provoking with a touch of mystery and a pinch of poetry—just what I like from a story collection!

— Serena Morales, Books Are Magic (Brooklyn, NY)

Masculinity, filtered through a variety of repressive state and societal apparatuses is on full display. . . . [Mandanipour] offers tiny glimpses of redemption but this is mostly a leopard eat stray dog world. Highly recommended.

— Douglas Riggs, Bank Square Books (Mystic, CT)

Nine short stories about Iran’s recent traumas, from the 1953 coup to the Iran-Iraq war. . . . Atmospheric and haunting, Mandanipour deftly incorporates magical realism through the use of animals in his unforgettable appraisal of the human condition.

— Somerville Public Library