TEHRAN – English-Canadian writer Tom Rachman’s 2014 novel “The Rise & Fall of Great Powers” has been published in Persian by Saless.

Asadollah Haqqani and Narges Mosavat are the translators of the book.

“The Rise & Fall of Great Powers” begins in a dusty bookshop. What follows is an abduction, heated political debate, glimpses into strangers’ homes and travel around the globe. 

It is a novel of curious personalities, mystery and lots of books: volumes that the characters collect, covet and steal.

Tooly Zylberberg, the owner of a bookshop in the Welsh countryside, spends most of her life reading. Yet there’s one tale that never made sense: her own life. 

In childhood, she was spirited away from home, and then raised around Asia, Europe and the United States. But who were the people who brought her up? And whatever happened to them?

There was Humphrey, a curmudgeon from Russia; there was the charming but tempestuous Sarah, who hailed from Kenya; and there was Venn, the charismatic leader who transformed Tooly forever. Until, quite suddenly, he vanished.

Years later, she had lost hope of ever knowing what took place. Then, the old mysteries stirred again, sending her – and the reader – on a hunt through place and time, from Wales to Bangkok to New York to Italy, from the 1980s to the Year 2000 to the present, from the end of the Cold War, to the rise and wobble of U.S. power, to the digital revolution of today.

Rachman’s debut novel was “The Imperfectionists”, published in 2010 by Dial Press, an imprint of Random House. The book has been published in 25 languages. Rachman was born in London, England, and grew up in Vancouver, Canada.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian edition of Tom Rachman’s novel “The Rise & Fall of Great Powers”.

MMS/YAW