Some stories worked better than others, but overall this collection was a miss for me. I had a hard time following what was happening in the stories, and didn't like how women were relegated to the sidelines.

I really enjoyed the narration of this audiobook! Very moving collection of short stories. The title and cover are also quite fitting.

liked a bit of this, but some i wasn't really sold. overall a good read!

- thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC in exchange for an early review.

4 stars

An excellent set of short stories in translation, full of variety, fluid prose, & compelling narratives.

[What I liked:]

•Man, this is a really great collection of short stories! Each one is poignant & well written without becoming repetitive; the painful moments are sketched with subtlety & avoid melodramatics; and the moments that are very relatable feel familiar & well-observed without being trite.

•The stories that stood out to me the most were the one about hunting a leopard, the one about grieving parents who are deprived of the chance to visit their child’s grave, and one about an tragic affair.

[What I didn’t like as much:]

•I pretty much liked every story, but most are pretty sad & some discuss violence. Don’t read it if you’re depressed, I guess.

CW: sexism, murder, physical violence, domestic violence, war, death of a child, infidelity

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

Two things: Each story is so disorienting and hard to follow for pages. And women are actually people too.

This was a hard book to read. Purgatory sums it up pretty well and what's more horrifying is how realistic it is based on the minimalist American view of Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

A story with many layers, one I hope to buy, probably in audiobook format. So his is probably a 3.5 star book for me

Season of purgatory is a collection of nine tales beautifully written and extremely well narrated.

The accounts are not linear, some happen in the past, some in the present, time varies even within a story. It is hard to decipher what is real and what is not. There are a lot of metaphors, monologues and internal dialogue, flashbacks, the narrative feels confusing and at times disjointed, but I feel that is what the author is going after.

There are some redundant themes across multiple tales such as strange relationships between human and animals, the seasons, men and nature, struggles of opposites. Only one character appears in more than one story. There is not closure to any of the narratives and most of them are pretty disturbing with an abundance of gore, fighting, injustice, oppositions, and violence, letting the reader wonder about the final outcome.

Perhaps because the cultural background, I found it hard to relate to any of the narratives. Despite that the narration is very good, a printed copy would be easier to follow as re-reading and slow reading would be a plus in this book.

Thank you #NetGalley and #HighBridgeAudio for an advanced copy of Seasons of Purgatory and the opportunity to provide some feedback to this audiobook. #SeasonsofPurgatory

I was struck by the lack of female perspectives in this book. One sentence reads "The captain's wife spoke little" and that about sums up most of the women who are generally very stoic or sometimes very emotional.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* interesting and certainly different read, would consider rereading i suppose but really feel i missed something lol

Format: audiobook
Author: Shahriar Mandanipour ~ Title: Seasons of Purgatory ~ Narrator: Fajer Al-Kaisi
Content: 4 stars ~ Narration: 5 stars

Seasons of the Purgatory is a collection of nine short stories from the Iranian author Shahriar Mandanipour. It is not an easy read. Many of the stories are like they were taken from someone’s purgatory. Topics are pretty diverse and explore modern life, traditions, love, jealousy, atrocities of war, and more. Many are sad, brutal, or heartbreaking. Like always with short stories, some are better than others. But, for me, with every story, they were getting better.

I liked the writing. The narrator is a Canadian-Iraqi actor Fajer Al-Kaisi. His voice is clear and easy to listen to. He uses some minor differences in pronunciation, so it sounded more authentic. I liked it.

Thanks to HighBridge Audio for the ALC and this opportunity! This is a voluntary review and all opinions are my own.

I found it kind of hard to understand the book at first, but then it grew to be very interesting. A great surprise, indeed!

A collection of graphic and visceral stories that explores collective violence as well as the interior lives of people living through war and destruction.
The imagery in these stories are so vivid, often grotesque yet mundane that they will stay with me for a long time. The collection explores various themes of disruption and death. Juxtapositions between the urban and rural, man and beast, mind and matter. These are some very powerful microcosmic stories of people living through violence.
The attitude towards women in some stories was a little difficult to read about.

The writing was very easy to keep up with and had a nice flow. I enjoyed the first story a good bit and how it dealt with one man dealing with anxiety and basically delving slightly into the human psyche. I found a few of the stories slower and more off-beat. I am a fan of short stories collections but a couple were hits and a couple were misses. Overall, I enjoyed listening to it and hearing different stories on familial relations and war. Some may not have been for me but I appreciated the collection as a whole.

The stories within this collection are captivating even as at times the starkness of the character's existence begins to become a presence in the story. at the heart of each are men and women who are searching for understanding, for the why of all that they are enduring and have come to expect. The natural world is also always present and I enjoyed how he played with perception and the relationship between man and nature.

There are stories here on loss, love, desire, and jealousy; characteristics and emotions that drive these players within their environments and that to some extent dictate their responses. There is a story here for everyone, that will leave a certain haunting and a certain question after having been read.

Early edition of this audiobook was provided for review purposes courtesy of NetGalley and HighBridge Audio. Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to review this book.

Seasons of Purgatory is a collection of nine translated short stories. The author is Iranian and each story interweaves some sort of terror and tension. I was very excited to be introduced to this translated fiction especially knowing the book involves magical realism. And yes, there are some mystical stories involving animals (dogs, leopards, snakes). Incidentally, the stories that I liked are the ones footed in current Iranian culture and nothing to do with magical realism (maybe just realism), especially "If She Has No Coffin" and "King of the Graveyard," both involving graveyards and family struggling deaths of children. I felt family's sorrow and unthinkable (from people living in US) conflicts they have to face. Unexpectedly, magical realism didn't resonate with me in this book. Overall, with an exception for the above two stories, the stories are lost for me personally. Looking back, maybe an actual book or Ebook might have been better for me for this particular book as I could take more time learning names of the character to sink in. The narration was fine though,
While this book wasn't for me, it was beautifully written and I would look for more translated literature in future. Thank you again HighBridge Audio for providing this audiobook.

Like with every short story collection some stories worked better for me than others. But overall this was a strong collection. The audiobook was well narrated.

Very beautiful writing - I was quick to consume in audio form. The quality and voice was clear and well done. The stories were captured in a poetic way that often tugged at the heartstrings. I enjoyed the deep seeded political messaging of a county so different from my own and hear these often harrowing stories is something I don’t often get a chance to hear about in the western world.

Love seeing and hear and reading from authors from places were their voices are often silenced due to the system of social pressure or governmental rules that don’t allow for such works to be distributed. Thank you for allowing me to listen!