These Crazy Nights

Paperback - July 20, 2019

About These Crazy Nights, Moniro Ravanipour writes: “In 1981, less than three years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and in the heat of the Iran-Iraq War, I had become a night nurse in a hospital in Tehran, where every night I witnessed the arrival of the soldiers wounded on battlefronts. It was in the course of those nights that I also witnessed endless arguments and debates among patients with different ideologies and beliefs, including leftists, monarchists, nationalists, and staunch supporters of the new Islamic regime. Late at night, when the hospital ward was quiet, the patients would come and tell me stories about the battlefronts and their lives. The initial chapters of this novel, which was shaping in my mind at the time, were written in Iran and the concluding chapters were completed in the United States.”This is a novel about the author’s life, first in Iran and later as a refugee and immigrant in the United States. It is an important novel to be made available in English, especially in a country made up of immigrants, and in particular at this time. It tells us, in fact it actually shows us, why so many people around the world, whether from the Middle East, South America, or elsewhere, are inclined to leave their ancestral land, their hearth and home, and try, despite all the odds and obstacles, to take refuge to the land of the free.

The Drowned 

Paperback - July 20, 2019

The Drowned is the translation of Moniro Ravanipour’s first novel, Ahl-e Gharq (1989), which brought her overnight nationwide recognition in Iran a decade after the tumultuous Islamic Revolution and a year after the devastating Iran-Iraq War. In general, in this novel, Ravanipour taps the rich culture of southwestern Iran, the region most affected by the destruction of the war, and more specifically, that of Jofreh, the village of her birth, and its inhabitants’ lives, customs, beliefs, superstitions, and struggles for survival.

THE KOLI BY THE FIRE

Jan 14, 2023

TRANSLATED FROM THE PERSIAN BY MARJAN MODARRES SABZEVARI

I Will Call You Once I Arrive in Kyiv

December 23, 2021

On January 8th, 2020, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shot down the Ukrainian International Airline flight PS752, shortly after takeoff in Tehran, Iran. In less than 50 seconds all 176 innocent passengers onboard, including twenty-five children and teenagers, as well as one unborn child, and nine crew members were killed. They shot down the airplane with two short-range missiles. Some of these families asked me to teach them how to write the memoirs of their loved ones lost in this criminal act. This book is the story of what we achieved during our coaching sessions in our workshop on writing memoirs.

Afsaneh, A Novel from Iran

Jan. 2 2014

One evening, thirty year old Afsaneh Sarboland, dressed only in a thin orange dress, flees her husband and home and attempts to create a new life. In the story, Afsaneh, a single writer, struggles to carve a space for herself in the chaotic society that has been ravaged by the scars of war. Childhood tragedies, the devastation of war, and an abusive husband have combined to drive her to madness. Tainted by the shame of being alone in that night that she cannot remember, she begins to unravel, mixing the present with memories of the past. Afsaneh is based on the author's life as a nurse on the graveyard shift in the early eighties and her experiences on the front during the Iran-Iraq war. Magical realism and the bitter realities of contemporary Iran are intertwined. Ravanipur pushes the boundaries of temporal space, disrupting the notion of traditional textual layouts.

Satan's Stones

Women writers occupy prominent positions in late 20th century Iranian literature, despite the increased legal and cultural restrictions placed upon women since the 1978-1979 Islamic Revolution. One of these writers is Moniru Ravanipur, author of the critically acclaimed The Drowned and Heart of Steel.

Satan's Stones is the first English translation of her 1991 short story collection Sangha-ye Sheytan. Often set in the remote regions of Iran, these stories explore many facets of contemporary Iranian life, particularly the ever-shifting relations between women and men. Their bold literary experimentation marks a new style in Persian fiction akin to "magical realism."

Reports from Iran indicated that Satan's Stones had been banned there by government authorities. While its frank explorations of Iranian society may have offended Islamic leaders, they offer Western readers fresh perspectives on Iranian culture from one of the country's most distinguished writers.

Kanizu

November 1, 2004

Kanizu is the first collection of short stories by Moniro Ravanipour, one of the best-known and most highly regarded post-revolutionary Persian fiction writers. In the stories of Kanizu, the reader will find the distinguishing features of the work of Moniro Ravanipour that now carry her artistic signature as innovative and highly inventive and creative. The most important of these features is perhaps her novel experimental approach to the art of the narrative. Ravanipour belongs to that group of modern writers whose works lean to some extent toward the abstract, not merely for the sake of abstraction, but to convey complexity, the complexity of modern life.