A flash fiction collection titled ‘Blind Fish,’ which includes stories from the best and most popular contemporary fiction writers, is now available in Persian.
The book, originally titled ‘Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories’ is edited by fiction writer Robert Shepard, associate professor at the University of Hawaii, and his colleague James Thomas.
First released in 2006 in the US, it has been translated into Persian by Ali Bakhshi, and published by Pelleh publishing house, Mehr News Agency reported.
The stories have been chosen from among a huge number of flash fiction masterpieces, based on the criteria of being “memorable and emotionally and logically evolving.”
“We hope the readers find the stories catchy and easy to remember. It’s a great joy for the authors to see that the readers are immersed in and enjoy the pieces, as we, the authors did,” says the book’s preface.
The 128-page book with 80 short and simple stories creates “a special sort of delight and a peaceful state of mind in the reader.”
Iran’s bookstores have earlier released joint works by authors, including ‘Sudden Fiction International: Sixty Short-Short Stories’ (1989).
Flash fiction, which has roots going back to prehistory, is an umbrella term used to describe any fictional work of extreme brevity. The term includes the six-word story and 140-character stories, which possess a unique literary quality, as the ability to hint at or imply a larger story.
Boleslaw Prus (1847–1912), Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), O. Henry (1862 –1910), Franz Kafka (1883 –1924), and also the renowned Persian poet and literary man of the medieval period, Saadi of Shiraz (1210-1291), were among the prominent practitioners of flash fiction.
