Without Saying Goodbye
By Maryam Sachs
Translated by Sara Sugihara
Quartet £10, 128 pages
FT Bookshop price: £8

Happily married Roxane becomes entranced by a stranger she catches sight of in a restaurant. A traffic accident brings the pair together, but Roxane has mixed feelings about embarking on an affair.

The plot, though not original, is handled with sensitivity. Like her heroine, Sachs is an Iranian exile settled in Paris. Narrated in the first person, her reflections, dislocation and nostalgia counterbalance the story’s more predictable elements. “I imagine my life as a painting”, she writes. “Ochre, orange and beige, the colours of the earth ... symbolise the pain of (my) exile.”

There is little analysis of contemporary Iran or the role of immigrants in French society. But the eloquent prose gives a vivid impression of the protagonist’s character and memories, which makes the adulterous desire sensual rather than smutty. An engaging, promising debut.