Two Worlds

The book “Two Worlds” written by Goli Taraghi includes 7 short stories titled: “The First Day”, “Ladies”, “Beyond the Wall”, “The Flowers of Shiraz”, “Angels”, “Father”, and “The Last Day”, which is essentially the second volume of the book “Scattered Memories”. In the first story of the book, we read that the narrator, who is the author herself, has been hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital due to mental health issues, and according to the doctors, she needs to start writing in order to recover from this condition. Consequently, the writer revisits her memories from childhood to adulthood. Each story is one of the memories that the author recalls in her mind, and in the story “The Last Day”, Ms. Taraghi regains her health and is discharged from the hospital. One prominent feature of Goli Taraghi’s stories is that women play significant roles. The stories are derived from the author’s childhood and adulthood, spanning from the neighborhoods of old Tehran in the late 1940s (Iranian calendar years 1320s) to 1987 (1367) in a way that she vividly portrays these settings, extending to a sanatorium on the outskirts of Paris. The stories “The Flowers of Shiraz” and “Beyond the Wall” were selected as award-winning stories during the third round of the Houshang Golshiri Literary Prize. Additionally, her story “The Pear Tree” was adapted into a film by Dariush Mehrjui.