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Review of A Naked Woman in the Snow by Dariush Beritan

May 13, 2024

A Naked Woman in the Snow is a short-story collection by Dariush Beritan. Indeed, it’s a… short short-story collection, at about 80 pages and containing five stories. In other words, although (as you will see in this review) it’s not a collection for everyone, it also doesn’t require much of your time. That makes it a marvelous opportunity to try something you’re unfamiliar with.

Familiarity with the subject matter – or lack thereof – will be the key concept in this review, because at the same time it’s what assigns the collection much of its expressive power yet also what keeps it from being fully relatable. But this isn’t as much of a problem as you might think. Indeed, I’d even say it’s a literary device – it’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

review of a naked woman in the snow; image of wheatfield — A good portion of *A Naked Woman in the Snow* is set in settings far outside what I’d term “the Anglophone experience”

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Why I Will Likely Never Write Another Novel

December 4, 2023

Fiction, Writing

creativity, fiction, imagination, literature, short story, writing

Note: Ain’t life funny? Not a month later, I simply needed to start writing another novel! Read all about this new novel, The Storytelling Cat.

Whenever someone says “always”, “never”, or “everyone”, be very suspicious. I am too of my own utterance. Never write another novel? Never say never again! However, at this point in time, and with enough experience behind me, I do feel that way: I will likely never write another novel in the foreseeable future.

Why I feel that way might be a useful thought direction to you as well, especially if you’re a writer, but also if you’re simply someone interested in what art and expression mean in today’s world. More still, what forms creative writing takes and why I feel a novel is currently not among my favorite such forms.

digital painting, or the reason why I will likely never write another novel — Here’s one of the reasons why I may “never” write another novel: I’ve begun painting, which feels like a more direct, more idea-based form of art, compared to a novel which is a sustained, in-depth exploration

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“A Summer Evening in Another World” (Short Story)

August 14, 2023

Fiction

fiction, short story, writing

If you are are reading this short story on or around the day it went live (and you live in the northern hemisphere), you are reading it on a summer day – and maybe evening. Quite by default, you are reading it “in another world”, because each one of us constructs their very own individual universe in terms of perception: You are the center of the world because that is the only way you can experience whatever “out there” reality that exists.

Fancy linguistic and conceptual wizardry aside, this is a short story I wrote in a sunny afternoon in April. As it often happens in art (certainly in my art), it contains plenty of references to experiences and things uniquely meaningful to me but which are entirely opaque to you. It’s “another world”, but one you can perhaps still see forming tangents with your own.

As it should also be fairly obvious, considering the title of this story, it’s part of my eponymous flash fiction collection, A Summer Evening in Another World.

Most of my novels are available as an immediate free download – simply visit the Fiction page on the main site. And remember, you can also just email me and ask for a free, no-strings-attached (e.g. review etc.) digital copy of any of my books.

another world — Another world awaits me…

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