Being understood can feel like the answer to a lifelong longing. In WHAT WE CARRY, Sima B. Moussavian follows that longing into a rural Irish village where love, language, and belonging carry unexpected consequences. Her literary novel invites readers to consider how deeply the stories surrounding them shape their sense of self.
A Village Where Every Story Has Weight
Samantha Wagner arrives in Ireland with a question rooted in her work as a linguist: how does a community preserve its identity after losing the language that helped create its world? It’s an inquiry that reaches into memory, everyday relationships, and the ways people make sense of their experiences.
At thirty-two, Samantha has built a professional life around words. Her childhood wish to become a witch survives as a curious thread in her imagination, while small, strange occurrences lend her world an uncanny atmosphere. Streetlights tremble. Radios slip into static. Even the cats seem to expect something from her.
These details establish the novel’s playful unease. Samantha understands language as a force capable of shaping entire civilizations, and her research gradually acquires a personal urgency. As her notebooks fill with observations and unanswered questions, Ireland begins changing the person holding the pen.
The village she enters has its own rules of recognition and belonging. Hospitality comes easily, yet acceptance feels harder to secure. Local histories influence conversations, silences communicate their own meanings, and an old crime continues to divide the community.
At the centre stands Callen O’Grady. People seek him out when someone disappears or violence threatens their lives. His reputation shifts depending on who tells his story. Some see criminality; others see rescue. His ability to help life continue after disaster gives him an influence Samantha feels compelled to understand.
That uncertainty creates a compelling starting point. Every account of Callen carries someone’s fear, loyalty, or need, leaving Samantha to navigate a place where interpretation has real consequences.
Love, Language, and the Authority to Define a Life
Samantha’s growing attachment to Callen brings her intellectual questions into intimate territory. He seems to understand her without requiring explanations. Around him, she experiences the relief of being seen completely, with little need to manage how she appears.
For someone who has spent years studying meaning, that connection holds considerable appeal. It also introduces the book’s most unsettling emotional question: what happens when another person’s understanding becomes powerful enough to shape someone’s reality?
Sima places that question within a broader exploration of inherited narratives. Families, communities, and nations pass down explanations about who people are and where they belong. Those explanations can influence which futures feel available to them. Samantha’s search gradually exposes the pressures contained within that process.
The novel unfolds across two parts. Its first part examines language, collective memory, and identity through village life and Samantha’s relationship with Callen. Dark humour accompanies the social tensions, giving the philosophical concerns a recognizably human setting.
In the second part, The Limits of Language, the focus expands toward the systems built around identity. Attempts to understand trauma and protect people from suffering develop into questions about imposed meaning and control. The authority to decide what others need becomes a central concern.
Chapter titles such as “Grammar of Ghosts,” “Morphology of Rumour,” and “Spaces Between Words” reinforce the connection between linguistic structures and emotional experience. They give readers an early sense of the novel’s preoccupation with everything words preserve, conceal, and transform.
For readers drawn to psychological fiction and metaphysical uncertainty, this combination offers substantial ground for reflection.
About the Author
Sima is a German novelist and ghostwriter born in 1988. She wrote her first novel at thirteen and has worked as a novelist and ghostwriter since 2010. Her short stories have appeared in German literary magazines, and socio-critical novellas hold a special place in her writing interests.
Her background in comparative and typological linguistics informs WHAT WE CARRY, which marks her first crossover between psychological and philosophical fiction. Having spent many years of her adult life in rural Ireland, she brings that experience to the novel’s setting. Her affection for the uncanny and for Charles Bukowski also features in her author biography.
The Questions That Travel Home
WHAT WE CARRY gives readers a love story surrounded by difficult questions about identity, memory, and the power of interpretation. Through Samantha’s search, Sima opens a conversation about the meanings people inherit and the authority they give others to define them. It’s an invitation to examine the stories they carry into their own lives.
We had the privilege of interviewing the author. Here are excerpts from the interview:
Hi, thank you so much for joining us today! Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do.
My name is Sima B. Moussavian. I am a German novelist and ghostwriter, and writing has been a part of my life from a very young age. I wrote my first novel when I was thirteen, and since then, I have continued to explore different forms of writing, from short stories and literary fiction to more socially and psychologically focused works.
My background in comparative and typological linguistics has also had a strong influence on my writing. I am particularly interested in language, identity, psychology, society, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.
My latest novel, What We Carry, is my first crossover between psychological and philosophical fiction. It brings together many of the subjects that have fascinated me for years, language, memory, identity, trauma, belonging, and the invisible forces that shape our understanding of reality.
Please share your journey with our readers.
My journey as a writer began very early. I wrote my first novel when I was thirteen, and over the years I continued writing and exploring different subjects, particularly stories that deal with people, society, identity, and the things that often remain unspoken.
What We Carry grew very much out of my own experience of living in Ireland for many years. During that time, I met many different people and became increasingly fascinated by the country, its culture, its history, its language, and especially by the stories people carry with them.
Some of the characters in What We Carry were inspired by real people I met while living in Ireland. I wanted to understand these people better, their personalities, their experiences, their relationships, and the way they saw the world. At the same time, I wanted to understand Ireland itself better. Writing about these characters became a way of exploring both the people I had encountered and the country that had become such an important part of my adult life.
Of course, the characters in the novel are fictional, but some of the human qualities, observations, and experiences behind them came from people and situations that stayed with me.
My background in linguistics also influenced the journey of the book. I have always been fascinated by language, not simply as a tool for communication, but as something that shapes how we experience reality. This led me to think about how much of our identity comes from the stories, memories, language, and meanings we inherit from other people.
So, in many ways, writing What We Carry was a journey of discovery for me as well. I was exploring the characters, Ireland, and its landscape, but I was also exploring much larger questions about identity, memory, belonging, trauma, and the stories that shape who we become.
What are the strategies that helped you become successful in your journey?
For me, the most important thing has been curiosity. I try to remain genuinely curious about people and about the world around me. Many of my ideas begin with a question rather than an answer.
I also believe in following those questions wherever they lead. With What We Carry, one question led me from linguistics into philosophy, psychology, trauma theory, Irish folklore, and questions about collective memory and identity. I think allowing myself to explore beyond one discipline made the story much richer.
Another important thing is perseverance. Writing is not always easy, and there are many moments of uncertainty. You have to continue working even when you don’t know exactly where a story is going to take you.
And perhaps most importantly, I think a writer needs to pay attention, to people, to conversations, to places, to silence, and even to the things that seem insignificant at first. Living in Ireland, meeting people, and observing the stories and relationships around me gave me many of the impressions that eventually found their way into What We Carry.
For me, success is therefore not simply about reaching a particular destination. It is also about remaining open, continuing to learn, and having the courage to follow an idea deeply enough to discover where it leads.
Any message for our readers?
I would say: remain curious about the stories you carry.
We all inherit stories: from our families, our cultures, our communities, and our histories. Some of these stories help us understand ourselves and give us a sense of belonging. But sometimes we accept them so completely that we stop questioning them.
What We Carry asks what happens when we begin to look beneath those stories. How much of who we are comes from the meanings we have inherited? What remains when we question them? And who has the right to decide which meanings another person should live by?
I hope readers will take something personal from the book. Perhaps it will make them think differently about language, memory, identity, or the people around them. Perhaps it will simply encourage them to look more closely at the stories they have been carrying themselves.
And above all, I hope readers enjoy the journey. As I wrote at the end of the book: “I hope you find something there worth bringing back.”
Thank you so much, Sima, for giving us your precious time! We wish you all the best for your journey ahead!