TEHRAN – Iranian publisher Cheshmeh has recently published the fifth edition of the Persian translation of Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra’s book “The Private Lives of Trees”.

Originally published in 2007, the book was translated into Persian by Vandad Jalili.

“The Private Lives of Trees” tells the story of a single night: a young professor of literature named Julián is reading to his step-daughter Daniela and nervously waiting for his wife Verónica to return from her art class. 

Each night, Julián has been improvising a story about trees to tell Daniela before she goes to sleep, and each Sunday he works on a novel about a man tending to his bonsai, but something about this night is different. 

As Julián becomes increasing concerned that Verónica won’t return, he reflects on their life together in minute detail, and imagines what Daniela—at twenty, at twenty-five, at thirty years old, without a mother—will think of his novel. 

Perhaps even more daring and dizzying than Zambra’s magical Bonsai, “The Private Lives of Trees” demands to be read in a single sitting, and it casts a spell that will bring you back to it again and again.

Zambra is also the author of “Bonsai”, “Ways of Going Home”, “My Documents” and “Multiple Choice”. 

His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, Harper’s, Zoetrope and McSweeney’s, among other places.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian edition of Alejandro Zambra’s book “The Private Lives of Trees”.

MMS/YAW