"Two Visions" is a most intriguing story of Mehdi, an ordinary boy from a traditional Iranian fam-ily who in the course of growing up to be an ordinary man is a spectator to some of the most extraordinary events of Iranian history in the 20th century. As a boy, Mehdi is shy and a loner, and his struggle throughout his life is to get out of his shell of loneliness and find an identity for him-self that is the opposite of his own introverted character. He always seeks that identity in flashy things and people, and thus he remains a spectator to other people’s lives, until the occurrence of an event toward the end of his life in which he becomes a spectacle. The second story, “The Trial,” begins about a month after the coup d’état that resulted in the overthrow of the government of Prime Minister Mosaddeq in 1953. The protagonist of the story and his family are in some ways reminiscent of the protagonist and his family in the previous story. Again, similar to Two Visions, the story begins with a picture of domestic tranquility, but as it progresses, the tranquility of the family is shattered. The turmoil in the country, martial law, and the political dictatorial atmosphere all contribute to forcing a career army officer, who is happy tending to his chickens at the beginning of the story, to become involuntarily involved in an unpleasant political cat-and-mouse game.