Translated From The Gibberish - Anosh Irani

Short Stories

Rating: 7/10

This collection is bookended by the author’s beautiful and visceral reflections on being an immigrant, and it’s in those spaces I found the most pleasure in this read.

His melodic tone and luxurious use of language will lull the reader and pull them thoroughly into the moment. The meticulously worded descriptions of the seemingly innocuous imbue inanimate objects with life.  A tattered pair of lady’s underwear with an off-white creamy hue that resembles the pages of a book too long left unread on the shelf. How the tongue of an elderly person becomes the only remaining powerful and muscular part of them when they are allowed to make use of it.

And of course, there are the fictional stories, wrought from the strange alchemy found in a beautiful mind. In these work’s we see the desires, hopes, fears and regrets of each protagonist and watch as the characters become entwined in various schemes, either of their own doing or by that of others.

Be warned, this is a book meant to be savored, every word to be loitered over.

Footnote: I found the authors description of his insomnia something to ponder; an unconscious attempt of the mind to exhume what is there and give it consciousness.