Forthcoming by Asemana Books (March, 6, 2026)

Hold Me, Fishes

Three Plays

Alireza Shieslar

Translated from Persian by

Sambol Afshari

These plays are written by Alireza Shilser, an Iranian playwright based in Luxembourg. It is a work born out of lived experience—structural violence, exile, war, and the psychological collapse of the contemporary human being—and it uncompromisingly forces the audience into confrontation.

The play, Hold Me, Fishes, was selected as the chosen work of the 14th Iranian Theater Festival in Heidelberg, Germany, and has also been staged at the Iranian Theater Festival in Cologne. These performances demonstrate that the text is not merely literature on the page, but a work with strong performative potential and immediate impact on stage.

Shilser, who holds a Master’s degree in Dramatic Literature, engages in this play with themes that are rarely comfortable or easily digestible: institutionalized violence, the wounded body, collective memory, migration, and the human being crushed under the weight of ideology and power. The language of the play is not poetic for the sake of beauty; it is harsh because the world it portrays is harsh. Emotions are not softened, and suffering is not censored.

This play is an attempt to record the voices of those who are usually unseen—a text that seeks neither consolation nor entertainment, but instead challenges the audience and leaves them unsettled.

The publication of this work by Asemana Books, both in book form and online, offers an opportunity for a more serious engagement with one of the independent and uncompromising voices of contemporary Persian-language theater.

Alireza Shilesar

Alireza Shilesar holds a bachelor’s degree in Acting and a master’s degree in Dramatic Literature. He has written 15 plays so far, most of which he has directed and staged himself. His most recent work in Iran was the play “Nakhoda Khanom”, which was featured at the National Ritual and Traditional Festival. After immigrating to Luxembourg, he continued his artistic career in the field of theatre. His play “Hold Me, Fishes” is among his works produced outside Iran and was selected by the audience as the outstanding piece at the Heidelberg Iranian Festival.