Ofoq Publications, which had invited the writer to Tehran in 2016, has released the book translated into Persian by Maryam Moayyedpur.
An English translation by Michael Hofmann published in January 2020 was named a best book of the season by Vogue.
In this alluring, melancholic novel, Stamm at his best – a writer haunted by his double – blurs the line between past and present, fiction and reality, in his attempt to outrun the unknown.
“Please come to Skogskyrkogarden tomorrow at 2. I have a story I want to tell you.” Lena agrees to Christoph’s out-of-the-blue request, though the two have never met.
In Stockholm’s Woodland Cemetery, he tells her his story, which is also somehow hers. Twenty years before, he loved a woman named Magdalena—an actress like Lena, with her looks, her personality, her past. Their breakup inspired him to write his first novel, about the time they were together, and in its scenes Lena recognizes the uncanny, intimate details of her own relationship with an aspiring writer, Chris.
Is it possible that she and Chris are living the same lives as Magdalena and Christoph two decades apart? Are they headed towards the same scripted separation? Or, in the fever of writing, has Christoph lost track of what is real and what is imagined?
In this subtle, kaleidoscopic tale, Stamm exposes a fundamental human yearning to beat life’s mysteries by forcing answers on questions that have yet to be fully asked.
Source: Tehran Times