Narrative Structures in Dolatabadi's Short Stories

Dolatabadi is the most prolific author of the last two decades in Iran. Before writing novels and creating his great works such as Saluch's Absence and Kaleidar, Dolatabadi wrote long short stories, which shows his interest in writing novels. There have been only a few studies on his works and those available are mostly about the content of his stories and novels. This paper is a study of fourteen short stories by him with a particular attention to issues such as plot, point of view, characterization, and the type of beginnings and endings in them. A brief review of Dolatabadi's life and works before 1357 as well as some scholar's views of the narration and narratology in his works will precede the main discussion.