Rituals of Restlessness [Paperback]

Engineer Kamran Khosravi wants to die in a car accident.

Or he at least wants it to look that way. His professional life in the Iranian hinterlands is full of bureaucratic drudgery — protecting dams, for example, from looters. His wife Fariba can no longer stand it, and has left him to rejoin her family in Isfahan. She is anxious for him to choose a life with her, or to let her go and persist with things as they are. But Kamran’s issues run deeper than anybody imagines.

Rituals of Restlessnesswon the 2004 Golshiri Foundation Award for the best novel of the year and was named one of the ten best novels of the decade by the Press Critics Award in Iran. However, in 2007 Yaghoub Yadali was sentenced to one year in prison for having depicted an adulterous affair in the novel.Rituals of Restlessnessand his short story collectionSketches in the Gardenhave been banned from publication and reprint in Iran. This book is the first for Phoneme Media’s City of Asylum Imprint, which showcases books by current and former writers‐in‐residence at the Pittsburgh‐based nonprofit.

Yaghoub Yadali, a fiction writer from Iran, has directed for television and worked forRoshd Magazineas the editor of the film section. In addition toRituals of Restlessness(2004) andSketches in the Garden(1997) , he is the author of the short story collectionProbablity of Merriment and Mooning(2001). His short stories, articles, and essays are published in Iran, Turkey, and the US. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa, Harvard University, and City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, PA.

Sara Khaliliis an editor and translator of contemporary Iranian literature. Her translations includeCensoring an Iranian Love Storyby Shahriar Mandanipour,The Book of Fateby Parinoush Saniee,Kissing the Sword: A Prison Memoirby Shahrnush Parsipur, andPomegranateló¾