The book contains fourteen short stories about topics relating to the focus of women in Iranian society. Women who - in the struggle between tradition and religion, and the rampant modernization of society - have been plagued by multiple identities and complex problems to accept their multiple roles. The book perfectly mirrors all the diverse strata of Iranian women and the dilemmas and difficulties they countenance. Each story opens a new window to the world of an Iranian woman in today’s Iran. The story of a woman whose wooden leg has been eaten by termites; a woman who is in conflict with the female myth of Penelope, a woman who had sought an occasion to abandon a man inches away from death, a man who had endured her during his lifetime; a woman who is addicted to play a mental game of killing other women in the subway station; a woman who has killed her husband’s sister and the murder has forced her to wandering and homelessness; a woman who uses magic and sorcery to take revenge of her loneliness of women who are loved by their men; a woman who at the zero point border, to escape ethnic and family prejudices, is trapped in a pit as prey to wolves; a woman who, after years of abstaining from relying on her gender aspects for career advancements, is back to square one and regrets that; a woman who sees other women in her life as monsters that have nibbled on her life; a woman who rescues a man from destruction with her gold and possessions; a woman who daydreams about getting away from her life and save herself from the boredom of being a housewife, while still dependent on her spouse and children; a woman who considers her man’s debauchery and sexual promiscuity a malignant tumor that must be tolerated; a woman who is no longer alive, but is still watching her mother and father and identifies with their sick relationship and feels its impact on herself; the story of a woman who knowingly establishes a relationship with a married woman to cure her loneliness.

Elham Fallah is the editor and collector of this collection. She has been working in the fields of novel writing, literary criticism, and journalism for over ten years. She has published two story collections, six adult novels, and three adolescent novels so far. She is a columnist in the fiction magazine Kargadan, Iran newspaper, Hamshahri Fiction, Arman, etc. She is also a virtual lecturer of story criticism base at the Fiction and Poetry Literature Foundation.