TEHRAN – American writer Steven Millhauser’s novella “Enchanted Night” has been published in Persian.

Javad Homayunpur is the translator of the book published by Saless.

This is a stunningly original new book set in a Connecticut town over one incredible summer night from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Martin Dressler”.

The delicious cast of characters includes a band of teenage girls who break into homes and simply leave notes reading “We Are Your Daughters”, a young woman who meets a phantom lover on the tree swing in her back yard, a beautiful mannequin who steps down from her department store window, and all the dolls “no longer believed in,” left abandoned in the attic, who magically come to life.

With each new book, Millhauser radically stretches not only the limits of fiction but also of his seemingly limitless abilities. 

“Enchanted Night” is a remarkable piece of fiction, a compact tale of loneliness and desire that is as hypnotic and rich as the language Millhauser uses to weave it.

Millhauser was born in New York City, grew up in Connecticut, and earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1965. 

He then pursued a doctorate in English at Brown University. He never completed his dissertation but wrote parts of “Edwin Mullhouse” and “From the Realm of Morpheus” in two separate stays at Brown.

His story “The Invention of Robert Herendeen” (in The Barnum Museum) features a failed student who has moved back in with his parents; the story is loosely based on this period of Millhauser’s life.

Until the Pulitzer Prize, Millhauser was best known for his 1972 debut novel, “Edwin Mullhouse”. This novel, about a precocious writer whose career ends abruptly with his death at age eleven, features the fictional Jeffrey Cartwright playing Boswell to Edwin’s Johnson.

Millhauser lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and teaches at Skidmore College.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian translation of Steven Millhauser’s novella “Enchanted Night”.

MMS/YAW