“The Gun Thief” | Words Without Borders

“Zarmina had always asked God for the same thing: her mother’s health, and an end to suffering. Either God hadn’t heard her, or if He had, He had looked the other way.”

In Elahe’s The Gun Thief (translated from Persian by Zubair Popalzai), we follow a young girl named Zarmina as she flees her enraged uncle after she sells his gun to buy medicine for her mother. Elahe’s gripping prose conveys Zarmina’s terror and the hideous price of her daring theft.

The Gun Thief, by Paranda writer Elahe, translated from Persian by Zubair Popalzai.

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