Holy Monsters

A novel by Aref Masoumzadeh that begins with a woman in labour on a moonless village night — beautiful, thin, fair, blue-eyed, with black hair no man had seen since she was five — in a landscape where customary and religious violence erupts on every side. The only sound in the village is dogs: the hungry ones howling and the fed ones guarding the flock. To the villagers, none of it is out of the ordinary. Text in Dari/Persian.

Author: عارف معصوم‌زاده

Original title: هیولاهای مقدس