Outside, the Storm is a book about books for lovers of books. Written by French author Clémentine Mélois and translated into English by Terry Bradford, this is a memoir about the love for literature. In a candid and intimate prose, Clémentine Mélois shares her experiences and memories of reading. Each chapter is a piece of a playful autobiography and a reflection on language, books as physical objects, as well as the life, habits, and modus operandi of writers. As a paean to the delights and eccentricities of a reader’s imagination, Outside, the Storm is a charming and witty defense and illustration of the act and joy of reading. But it is also a poignant commentary on a stormy world, from which reading books can provide temporary refuge.
I Am Not a Novel is a dystopian fiction about censorship and the stories that get told in spite of it. Set in an unnamed country and an unspecified time, the story unfolds in nine sections that follow the lives of the different protagonists who take part in the process of writing, publishing, circulating, reading and preserving books amid an environment of danger and surveillance. A masterpiece of minimalist literary style, the novel offers a meditation on how censorship begins as a quiet restraint and permeates all aspects of life in a society. After the original Persian version was not allowed to be published in Iran, Vahabi rewrote it in French and published it in France as Je ne suis pas un roman, where it was awarded the prestigious Sciences Po Literary Prize in 2023.
PRAISE FOR
OUTSIDE, THE STORM
Outside, the Storm, Clémentine Mélois' memoir about the joys of reading, takes the reader on a journey where Melville, Tolkien, Calvino and other favorite writers rub shoulders with pop songs, advertisements and diverse childhood memories. Her humor and inventiveness throw down the gauntlet to any translator; Terry Bradford's superb translation captures the book's panache, reveling in its playfulness, its lists, its quotations, associations and references, ranging from Captain Birdseye to Christopher Columbus. “Everything is interesting,” as Mélois writes, including the apparent boredom of sections of Moby Dick. Bradford's translation invites us to share in the sheer pleasures of reading, where opening lines and literary characters come to life as part of the writer's family.
Richard Hibbitt,
Vice-President, European Society of Comparative Literature
Countless are the books on reading but none will awaken the sense, and even the smell, of real-life literary euphoria found in Outside, the Storm. Clémentine Mélois’ book is a marvelous mix of personal testimony, poetic imagination, empathetic curiosity, and also a testimony of the endless pursuit of amazement and discovery that readers can find in all books, great and small. Outside, the Storm is a life-long and never-ending conversation with printed books, a conversation that blurs the boundaries between art and life, past and present, oneself and the world.
Jan Baetens
Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Studies at KU Leuven
PRAISE FOR
I AM NOT A NOVEL
“A strong, well-written novel that shows the author’s mastery….” in I Am Not a Novel these are the words of a censor referring to an author’s work sitting in limbo, awaiting clearance. Chilling. But, in fact, this beautiful novella, written originally in Persian and rendered in English by Parisa Saranj, is indeed a masterful work that weaves the lives of different characters around the question of authorship in a culture of censorship.
Hooman Majd
Author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
In her provocatively titled book I Am Not a Novel, Nasim Vahabi takes us to an unnamed land where words must fight for their existence. Chapters stand together like books on a shelf, each with its own protagonist and form, such as a lyric essay, an epistolary section, and a WhatsApp chat moving back in time. Through Parisa Saranj’s nuanced translation, the distinct voices that shelter books—the author, the publisher, the bookseller, the librarian, and readers—come to life in English as the warp and weft of unexpected love and resistance.
Kaveh Bassiri
Author of 99 Names of Exile
What a strange, exhilarating, nerve-wracking, and ultimately delightful book! Vahabi has crafted a wildly inventive meditation on censorship, memory, love, and the extraordinary power of storytelling. By turns absurd, unsettling, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly tender, this is a daring and deeply original work that reminds us why literature matters — and why those in power fear it so much.
Reza Aslan
Author of An American Martyr in Persia
A Kafkaesque novella inspired by the labyrinthine world of publishing in Iran, I Am Not a Novel is a tribute to those who remain steadfastly committed to the world of literature. In an atmosphere of “uncomfortable anticipatory silence,” where loss and violence are always right around the corner, Nasim Vahabi’s book invites us to spend time with a constellation of characters who gather around words in resistance, faithfully holding tight to their love for books and for one another. A cautionary tale against what could be (might already be) unfolding our present, I Am Not a Novel is a little treasure not to be missed.
Parisa Saranj’s translation beautifully carries through the succinct potency at the heart the original Persian.
poupeh missaghi
Author of Sound Museum