Code: 49873 A

“Brief Encounters with the Enemy” appears in Persian

“Brief Encounters with the Enemy” appears in Persian

TEHRAN –(Iranart)- American writer Said Sayrafiezadeh’s short story collection “Brief Encounters with the Enemy” has been published by Parseh Publications in Tehran.

Translated by Milad Zakaria, this is the first short story collection from Sayrafiezadeh, a writer who calls to mind such American writers as Denis Johnson, George Saunders and Nathan Englander.

When the New Yorker published a short story by Sayrafiezadeh in 2010, it marked the emergence of a startling new voice in fiction.

In this astonishing book, Sayrafiezadeh conjures up a nameless American city and its unmoored denizens: a call-center employee jealous of the attention lavished on a co-worker newly returned from a foreign war; a history teacher dealing with a classroom of maliciously indifferent students; a grocery store janitor caught up in a relationship with a customer.

These men’s struggles and fleeting triumphs with women, with cruel bosses, with the morning commute are transformed into storytelling that is both universally resonant and wonderfully strange.

Sometimes the effect is hilarious, as when a would-be suitor tries to take his sheltered, religious date on a tunnel of a love carnival ride. Other times it’s devastating, as in the unforgettable story that gives the book its title: A soldier on his last routine patrol on a deserted mountain path finally encounters “the enemy” he’s long sought to get a glimpse of.
 
Upon giving the author the Whiting Writers’ Award for his memoir named “When Skateboards Will Be Free”, the judges hailed his writing as “intelligent, funny, utterly unsmug and unpreening.”  

These fiercely original stories show their author employing his considerable gifts to offer a lens on our collective dreams and anxieties, casting them in a revelatory new light.

source: Tehran Times

Said Sayrafiezadeh Brief Encounters with the Enemy
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