gūgird Persiska (Farsi) 2025

Sulfur is a novel by Atieh Attarzadeh, a writer well known to serious readers of contemporary Persian literature for her acclaimed work A Guide to Dying with Medicinal Herbs. In this novel, as in her earlier book The Bestiary, Attarzadeh constructs a narrative infused with historical atmosphere. The combination of fantastical and imaginary elements set against a backdrop of historical events is the storytelling approach she adopts in her two most recent novels.

The story is narrated by a dog—a creature granted immortality—who witnesses the lives and deaths of several generations of a family. This immortal dog lives in a pharmacy in Tehran in the late twelfth century AH, and through its perspective the author tells the story in a fresh and unconventional way, offering a symbolic and distinct vantage point on human existence. Themes of humanity’s quest for immortality and the contemplation of life and death are central to the novel.

During a time of famine, a dog is born in one of Tehran’s moats, destined to be deathless. This dog becomes witness to a strange and mysterious experiment: a man dressed in black confides a bloody, sulfur-scented secret to an orphaned apprentice in the basement of one of Tehran’s earliest pharmacies. No creature besides the dog is capable of sensing this secret. Yet being a dog is no simple task—it requires choosing a canine life and bearing its burdens; the reward for such a life is immortality.

In Sulfur, the reader journeys alongside a thin, aging dog through alleyways spanning multiple periods of time, accompanying him in the search for Yahyā-ye Yekpā (Yahya the One-Legged). Yahya, who has nursed from this very dog, is cursed to grow old—just like his father, his ancestors, and all who once lived in the pharmacy’s subterranean laboratory—as he seeks the secret of eternal life. The narrative refers to a mysterious black-clad figure, the source of immortality, who once revealed the secret of this miracle to Yahya’s father.

The narrator perceives the world, humanity, and human emotions through scent. This sensory mode of perception imbues the novel with a poetic texture and allows emotions to be rendered in new and vivid forms, deepening the reader’s understanding of them. For example, longing smells like bitter almonds, joy carries the fragrance of honey, and love has no scent at all. Transforming such abstract concepts into concrete, tangible sensory experiences is a difficult task—one the author accomplishes with remarkable success.