The Place of Stones is Ali Hosseini’s newly translated first novel. In it, he paints a vivid portrait of Sangriz, a village in the southern part of Iran where life has been disrupted by industrialization and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Haydar and Jamal are best friends, and their families have always made their living from the land in the foothills of Iran’s Zagros Mountains. Their lives are pulled forcefully toward the explosive events that will change them all. In masterfully-crafted prose that never sinks into sentimentality, The Place of Stones illuminates how a lost past continues to shape the present.