A man who does not recognise his own face, an aristocrat who keeps his amputated limbs in jars on the shelf, an infant that commits suicide, a cat that is secretly writing a novel, a rooster that rebels against fate -- those are some of the characters that make Bahram Sadeqi's stories intriguing, incomparable and inimitable. Sadeqi is an original story-teller who depicts familiar facts and mundane realities in such a way that shocks us to the core and makes us call everything into question. With a subtle irony reminiscent of Poe, Kafka and Marquez, he engages us in an intricate quest to explore the meaning of life, death and the cosmos. Considering the slight body of work Sadeqi left behind after his untimely death, one cannot help but be struck by the impact his work has had on Persian literature nevertheless. Sadeqi consistently transgressed established literary ideologies with an easy confidence, pioneering an entirely new style of literature and presenting his own unique perspective on the human condition. His presence in contemporary Persian prose fiction was like that of a lone meteorite: appearing in a blinding flash, instantly yet fleetingly illuminating its surroundings, then abruptly fading into the darkness, leaving only a completely original, overwhelming and fantastic trail, the remainder of something singularly magnificent that we cannot hope to ever see repeated. Ever since he first published his stories in literary journals as a young writer, Sadeqi's works have been widely reprinted, finding vast audiences among each new generation of Iranians. This collection contains some of Sadeqi's best short stories, as well as Malakut, his magnum opus, a novella that took everyone by surprise in the 1960s, still fascinating readers and critics alike.

More than two decades after their parents rose up against the excesses of the Shah, increasing numbers of young Iranians are risking jail for things their counterparts in the West take for granted: wearing makeup, slow dancing at parties, holding hands with members of the opposite sex. Arrests of youngsters often take place at parties raided by hardline religious paramilitaries of roughly their own age, brandishing AK-47s. And every day anxious parents queue at the courthouse to bail out their children, who - in furious defiance of Ayatollah Khomeini's brand of sombre religiosity - have been detained for 'moral crimes'. Kaveh Basmenji, who spent his own youth amidst the turbulence of the Islamic Revolution, argues that Iran's youth are in near-open revolt for want of greater personal freedom, in furious defiance of the mullahs and their brand of sombre religiousity. Through candid interviews with young people, and in a careful assessment of Iran today (including a special chapter on the implications of the recent election to the presidency of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), Basmenji gets to the heart of the matter: what do Iran's youth want, and how far are their elders prepared to accommodate them?