Top 10: Books to Celebrate Nowruz

1. Winter of 88 by Mohammad Yaghoubi, translated by Nazanin Malekan & Mohammad Yaghoubi
(Playwrights Canada Press – Drama/Play) 

This is the story of Nasrin and her two adult children—daughter Nahid and son Mahyar—who just want to feel safe and settled. Tensions are already high and when Mahyar leaves the apartment in a heated moment, he leaves Nasrin racked with fear. As the missiles start to strike and the power goes out, Nahid tries to hold everything together. From that moment on, it’s about survival.

This heart-wrenching meta-autobiographical play, presented in both English and Farsi, is a window into days when death was practically a neighbour in war-torn Tehran. It’s a dedication to those who are left behind with the trauma of war and survivors’ guilt. Author Mohammad Yaghoubi survived it, so he had to write about it.

2. A Fall Afternoon in the Park by Mehri Yalfani (Inanna Publications – Fiction – coming June 2023)

In the story “Rainy Day,” a little girl longs for a doll with golden hair; in “Adopted Child,” a successful business professional delays having a baby but then discovers a secret; in “Armchair Émigré,” siblings struggle to settle their parents estate; an educated woman finds herself cleaning the home of a wealthy, illiterate woman to pay the bills in the story “Adam,” and, in the title story, a family is divided (literally) when the mother loses her job and they must make difficult decisions for their future.

Mehri Yalfani’s new collection consists of nineteen short stories, primarily from Iranian women’s perspectives set in Iran and Canada. They offer varied, compelling snapshots of family, friendship, culture, tradition, discrimination, class issues, and struggle, and offer a glimpse into the challenges and joys of immigrant and refugee lived experiences in the Canadian diaspora.

3. South by Babak Lakghomi (Dundurn Press – Fiction – coming August 2023) 

B, a journalist, travels to the South of an unnamed desert country for a mysterious mission to write a report about the recent strikes on an offshore oil rig. From the beginning of his trip, he is faced with a cruel and broken landscape of drought and decay, superstitious believers of evil winds and spirits, and corrupt entities focused on manipulation and censorship. As he tries to defend himself against his unknown enemies, we learn about his father’s disappearance, his fading love of his wife, and his encounter with an unknown woman.

This is a puzzle-like novel about totalitarianism, surveillance, alienation, and guilt that questions the forces that control us.

4. Sister Seen, Sister Heard by Kimia Eslah (Roseway Publishing – Fiction)

This is the story of Farah, who is ready to move out of her parents’ house. It takes an hour to get to campus, and she has no freedom to be herself. Maiheen and Mostafa, first-generation Iranian immigrants in Toronto, find their younger daughter’s “Canadian” ways disappointing and embarrassing, and they wonder why Farah can’t be like her older sister Farzana — though Farah knows things about Farzana that her parents don’t. They begrudgingly agree to let Farah move, and she begins to explore her exciting new life as an independent university student. But when Farah gets assaulted on campus, everything changes.

This beautiful coming-of-age story will be familiar to every immigrant in the diaspora who has struggled to find a way between cultures, every youth who has rebelled against their parents and every woman who has faced the world alone.

5. A Life Spent Listening by Dr. Hassan Khalili (Breakwater Books – Memoir)

A unique and engaging perspective of humanity – a journey to wisdom shared through stories of self-awareness, acceptance, and discovery, by acclaimed psychotherapist Dr. Hassan Khalili. In A Life Spent Listening, Dr. Hassan Khalili reflects on four decades of being a frontline community psychotherapist and shares the wisdom he has learned over the years. By inviting the reader into his own life and the lives of his patients, Dr. Khalili explores the human condition and explains his concept of the grid as a guiding principle in his psychological practice.

The book takes us from his experience as a young Iranian immigrant in Newfoundland and Labrador to his role as one of the top psychologists in the province, by way of his adventures hiking Machu Picchu and Mount Kilimanjaro. Dr. Khalili illuminates what it means to seek contentment and how we hold the key to our own happiness.

6. Pistachios in My Pocket by Sareh Farmand (At Bay Press – Poetry) 

Poet Sareh Farmand was born in Tehran at the start of the Islamic Revolution. In this brave first collection of poems and prose a narrative arc details her family’s escape from Iran, detailing their time as immigrants in limbo, and finally, as Landed Immigrants in Canada. Using family anecdotes, memory, public documents, and images to outline her family’s story, Pistachios in my Pocket moves from the personal to the universal by exploring the influences of migration, political strife, and cultural identity on humanity.

7. Never Without Love by Mehrnaz Massoudi (Inanna Publications – Memoir)

Both charming and powerful, this memoir unfolds the story of a young girl born in Iran who eventually triumphs over sexism and abuse to become a successful woman and mother in Canada. The book opens with a dramatic account of a terrible accident that leaves a young child with burn scars all over her chest. This scarring has a profound effect on the girl’s life. Yet, despite this accident, the narrator’s childhood is rich and blessed in many ways. The family circle is extensive and the relationships, especially with the wonderful Baba (her father) and her spirited cousin Fereshteh, are both protective and complex.

8. Thirty Shadow Birds by Fereshteh Molavi (Inanna Publications – Fiction) 

To pursue her dream of building a life free from violence for her son and herself, Yalda flees from her nightmarish past as well as her troubled homeland, Iran. But in her new haven, she realizes that nightmares haunt not only her past, but also her present and future. Having fled from an authoritarian regime, and now living in a North America panic-stricken by global terrorism, Yalda is obsessed with all the forms and aspects of violence. She is estranged from her beloved son, Nader, who trains to become an armed security guard, and this means he is wearing a uniform and carrying weapons, prepared to be violent. She cannot forget that her first love was shot and killed by a young prison guard and that her beloved step brother also met a violent death. This family history is a wound that makes guns taboo and Yalda yearns to feel safe in a troubled world.

The novel is part memory, part dream, and part present, day-to-day struggles for immigrants living in Toronto and Montreal.

9. Through The Sad Wood Our Corpses Will Hang by Ava Farmehri (Guernica Editions – Fiction)

At the age of twenty, Sheyda Porrouya’s life is almost over. She was born in Iran on the day staunchly orthodox mullas declared the birth of the Islamic Republic and set about summarily purging the country of all things Western and un-Islamic. To make matters worse, as she matured, Sheyda seemed increasingly unable to distinguish between fairy tale and reality. She began to exhibit disturbing behavior. When Sheyda is accused of killing her mother, she is immediately jailed and sentenced to death by hanging. The narrative jumps back and forth from Sheyda’s childhood to her current life in one of Iran’s most notorious prisons, where she awaits either release or execution.

10. Songs of Exile by Bänoo Zan (Guernica Editions – Poetry)

These poems, arranged chronologically, give an impressionistic account of the poet as an immigrant, in quest of her inner voice and her core self, in the new land. They reveal intense isolation, despite engagement with the so-called political, religious, and cultural disparities between the two countries. The poems tell the story of how the speaker comes closer to her roots by leaving her country behind. They reveal her concern about the Middle East; the negative associations with her country, Iran; her preoccupation with the possibility of reconciliation between the three Abrahamic religions; her concerns about her family back home, and her newly found friends and lover. For the persona in these poems, the political is personal.

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For more Top 10, click here. (And happy Nowruz tomorrow to all who celebrate!)