The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree — Farnoosh Moshiri

Awarded the Black Heron Press Prize for Social Fiction. In the dozen stories in The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree, Farnoosh Moshiri combines social and political insight with the mythology of her native Iran. Her earlier books, The Bathhouse (which also won the Black Heron Press Prize for Social Fiction) and At the Wall of the Almighty, were set in Iran. The present book is set both in Iran and the United States. Several of the stories are concerned with the loss of status, the poverty, the loss of identity that immigrants often suffer. Unlike most immigrant stories, The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree deals equally with the violence and political repression visited upon those who would emigrate during the fundamentalist revolution in Iran.