Thirst — Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

On a strategic hill overlooking the frontier, Iraqi and Iranian troops battle for access to a water tank. The troops are thirsty and on the brink of madness. They are, moreover, characters in a novel being written by an Iraqi journalist. That is, if he is given the chance to write it, a chance denied him by an Iraqi major who is in charge of a military prison and commands the journalist to write a fictitious report about a murder in the camp in hope of demoralising enemy soldiers.

At the same time, on the other side of the border, an Iranian author writes the story of the same troop of soldiers but from an Iranian perspective. He, likewise, is interrupted, not by external forces, but by memories of his first encounter with a gun.

Told in a kaleidoscopic style that weaves between the ongoing battle and the struggles of the writers, Thirst is rich with dark humour and surreal images. The emphasis on maintaining humanity and individual identity during war shows, once again, why Mahmoud Dowlatabadi is the most important Iranian writer of the last century.