That Stranger Within Me

Fiction. Middle-Eastern Studies. Translated from the Farsi by Esmail Nooriala. “On Thursday August the ninth, 1979, at 3:30 in the afternoon, Amin’s family, friends and I became certain that he had definitely disappeared. Saeed, Abdol, and Ahmad had gone through all of the unidentified corpses in Tehran’s central morgue and had told Nargess and me, waiting in the stuffy corridor filled with the repulsive smell of disinfectant, ‘He is not here.'” So begins Shokooh Mirzadegi’s best-selling novel of alienation and exile in post-Revolution Iran. THAT STRANGER WITHIN ME encompasses universal issues affecting humankind in this century, infusing this genre of literature with new meaning. “Mirzadegi addresses the mysterious death of a husband, infidelity, sorrow, abortion, exile and a series of other social and political issues against the backdrop of a recently revolutionized Iran coming to terms with its anger against a fallen and greatly misunderstood monarchy.” — Tara Taghizadeh.