I'm Not Janette

  • MtBk6 - I'm Not JanetteCollection of short stories
  • published by Ofoq Publications
  • Tehran: 2011
  • 96 pages
  • Winner of 12th Golshiri Literary Awards

 

 

 

 

 

About the Book

The collection contains seven interwoven short stories whose protagonist is the writer himself.The stories cover a wide range of experiences by contemporary Iranian man from immigration, poverty, robbery, addiction and war to love and memory. In “Butterfly,” Mohammad plays Tar in the house of Abutorabi, an elderly singer, to make a living. His girlfriend thinks the job is fishy and starts to chase after her man, until one day Abutorabi, in euphoria, tells him of a pretty maid who has just started working in his house…“Soaking Wet Driush” is set in Rasht, city of heavy raining. The narrator has to stop in front of a bookstore when an old friend joins him and, noticing their voyeurism, thinks there is a love story between the pretty bookseller…“Half Tenor Mohsen” is an antique dealer. One day he asks Mohammad to host his girlfriend for a day or two but disappears for good. Together with the girl Mohammad gets involved in a robbery plot. In “Birthday of Reza Deldar-Nick,” stimulated by a bizarre scent of a deodorant in his girlfriend’s house, the narrator travels in time to his childhood memories of poverty and family problems. “I’m Not Janette” is a déjà vu setting. Years ago, Mohammad’s grandfather used to be a tailor in Paris and in love with a girl named Janette. Six decades later the narrator comes across a girl with the same features on Valiasr Street of Tehran. In “The Leilaj of Beyoğlu,” Mohammad Maniac is an invincible backgammon player enchained by a veteran gambler in Istanbul; his freedom is promised only after he wins the best players of Istanbul. And in “The Luminous Road,” Mohammad is killed by incident in a street fight in Isfahan, now lying on the sink to be washed and buried by a man akin to his old friend Arash – a screenwriter in Tehran.

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