Reading the Stories of Akhavān Sales, the Storyteller

Mehdi Akhavān Sāles, apart from his poems and literary articles, has written a number of stories which he names some kind of “incontinence”. A deep contemplation on the form and content of these stories, reveals the dialog that takes place between his poetry and story writing and manifests components such as conversation, characterization, and suspension. Meanwhile Akhavān’s introduction to “Old Tree and the Forest” says a lot about the suspension of Iranian intellectuals between tradition and modernity. Although these stories are valuable in their own turn, they can never replace his poetry for which he has established an elevated place in Iranian contemporary literature.