Synopses & Reviews
The ten stories in Veils take place in present-day Iran or in the United States where Iranian immigrants face alien ways. Teheran’s ancient Ghanat Abad Avenue, with its labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys, loosely links the stories into a single narrative: some residents leave as soon as they can, others can live nowhere else. The men and women in these spare and sensuous narratives who are caught in the confusing whirl of changing cultures sometimes meet with failure but more often transcend difficult circumstances to gain deeper self-knowledge.
About the Author
Nahid Rachlin, born in Iran, came to the United States to attend college and stayed. Among her publications are a memoir, PERSIAN GIRLS (Penguin), four novels, JUMPING OVER FIRE (City Lights), FOREIGNER (W.W. Norton), MARRIED TO A STRANGER (E.P.Dutton), THE HEART'S DESIRE (City Lights),and a collection of short stories, VEILS(City Lights). Her work has been published in Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Farsi, Arabic. All her published books are currently in print in paperback editions and are available at chain stores as well as independent ones. They are also widely used in college courses.Her individual short stories have appeared in more than fifty magazines, including The Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Redbook, Shenandoah, New Letters. They have been reprinted in several anthologies, including, Literature, The Human Experience, St. Martin's Press. Her essays have been published in Natural History Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series and in an anthology, How I Learned to Cook and other writings On Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships, Penguin. She has written reviews for the New York Times and Newsday.While a student she held a Doubleday-Columbia fellowship and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship (Stanford). The grants and awards she has received include, the Bennet Cerf Award, PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Currently she teaches at the New School University and the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y. She has taught at Yale University and Barnard College. She is an associate fellow at Yale. The Writers conferences she has taught at include: Geneva,Switzerland Writers Conference, Paris Summer Writers conference, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Aspen, Taos, Southampton College, Hofstra University, Iowa University, Centrum, Marymount Manhattan College, Writers in Paradise, Florida, Antioch, Abroad Writers Conference, Rutgers.