A City Under Siege


A City Under Siege: Tales of the Iran–Iraq War is a collection of nine stories from the Iran–Iraq War by Habib Ahmadzadeh, an Iranian author. The book won awards in Iran and was called one of the top twenty books about the Iran–Iraq War. The book was originally published in 2000 by Sureye Mehr Publication in Persian. Paul Sprachman, professor of Rutgers University translated the book from Persian into English and Mazda Publishers published it in 2010.

Author

was born in Abadan in 1964. He received his MA of Dramatic Literature from Tehran University of Art. Ahmadzadeh contributed to writing scripts including The Glass Agency, An Umbrella for the Director, and The Rig, among others. His first work was Chess with the Doomsday Machine.

Reception

Writing in complete review, M.A. Orthofer said:
The book was reviewed in Middle East Studies Association of North America's Review of Middle East Studies by Hamid Eshani.

Awards and honors

Habib Ahmadzadeh received the third prize of the Writing Forge Short Story Competition for his "Letter to the Sa'ad Family", published in A City Under Siege.

Contents

A City under Siege consists of these novelettes:
  1. "Eagle Feather"
  2. "The Airplane"
  3. "An Umbrella for the Director"
  4. "Thirty-nine Plus One Prisoners"
  5. "The Fleeing of the Warrior"
  6. "A Letter to the Saad Family"
  7. "If There Were No Darya Qoli"
  8. "Vengeance"
  9. "Neneh"