“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” published in Persian

TEHRAN –(Iranart)- A Persian translation of American writer Anthony Marra’s 2013 novel “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” has been published in Tehran.

Now is the publisher of the book rendered into Persian by Farzaneh Qojalu and Mohammadreza Jafari.

It is a brilliant debut novel that brings to life an abandoned hospital where a tough-minded doctor decides to harbor a hunted young girl, with powerful consequences.

In the final days of December 2004, in a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa hides in the woods when her father is abducted by Russian forces.

Fearing for her life, she flees with their neighbor Akhmed, a failed physician, to the bombed-out hospital, where Sonja, the one remaining doctor, treats a steady stream of wounded rebels and refugees and mourns her missing sister. 

Over the course of five dramatic days, Akhmed and Sonja reach back into their pasts to unravel the intricate mystery of coincidence, betrayal and forgiveness that unexpectedly binds them and decides their fate.

Marra gives us a searing debut about the transcendent power of love in wartime, and how it can cause us to become greater than we ever thought possible.

“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” won the 2014 National Book Critics Circle’s inaugural John Leonard Prize and the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in fiction, as well as the inaugural 2014 Carla Furstenberg Cohen Fiction Award. 

Marra’s novel was a National Book Award longlist selection as well as a shortlist selection for the Flaherty-Dunnan first novel prize. 

In addition, his work has been anthologized in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012. 

Marra is the winner of a Whiting Award, Pushcart Prize and the Narrative Prize. He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University where he teaches as the Jones Lecturer in Fiction. 

He has lived and studied in Eastern Europe, and now resides in Oakland, CA.

source: Tehran Times