Afraid of the Dark

What compels a woman to invent an affair she never had? Why does a man stay to care for a woman who is no longer his, simply because the body has betrayed her? In this masterful short fiction collection, Hossein Asgari explores the precarious nature of our relationships—with our fathers, our lovers, and ourselves.

A young man finds himself a temporary guardian to a stranger’s child; an English teacher revisits a small-town crime; a heartbroken soul finds healing in the most unlikely of places. Moving between the mundane and the metaphysical, Afraid of the Dark interrogates our universal struggle to form lasting bonds. Asgari’s prose is sharp, empathetic, and deeply attuned to the messed-up ways we try to love one another in an increasingly isolated world.