My Bird

In this powerful story of life, love, and the demands of marriage and

motherhood, Fariba Vafi gives readers a portrait of one woman's struggle

to adapt to the complexity of life in modern Iran. The narrator, a housewife

and young mother living in a low-income neighborhood in Tehran, dwells

upon her husband Amir's desire to immigrate to Canada. His peripatetic

lifestyle underscores her own sense of inertia. When he finally slips away,

the young woman is forced to raise the children alone and care for her

ailing mother.

Vafi's brilliant minimalist style showcases the narrator's reticence and

passivity. Brief chapters and spare prose provide the ideal architecture

for the character's densely packed unexpressed emotions to unfold on

the page. Haunted by the childhood memory of her father's death in the

basement of her house while her mother ignored his entreaties for help, the

narrator believes she relinquished her responsibility and failed to challenge

her mother. As a single parent and head of household, she must confront

her paralyzing guilt and establish her independence.

Vafi's characters are emblematic of many women in Iran, caught

between tradition and modernity. Demystifying contemporary Iran by taking

readers beyond the stereotypes and into the lives of individuals, Vafi is

one of the most important voices in Iranian literature. My Bird heralds her

eagerly anticipated introduction to an English-speaking audience.