DISPATCH FROM IRAN
When the US launched a war against Iran and assassinated the Ayatollah just a week prior to our gathering, our March book club became tragically relevant. My intention in selecting Iran as our March "destination" was to highlight the beautiful holiday of Nowruz, which marks the Persian New Year right as spring returns. Its an ancient Zoroastrian tradition that honors yearly cycles of growth and renewal, but this year's celebrations will be shadowed by the conflict and bloodshed Iranians have faced this year.
But in this heavy moment, we had a deep and engaging conversation, enriched by a few personal connections to Iran and the sheer BREADTH of books that everyone had read:
The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali
Blind Owl by Sadeq Hedayat
Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur
Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour
My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar
Man of My Time by Dalia Sofer
Let Me Tell You Where I've Been, Edited by Persis M. Karim
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Disoriental by Négar Djavadi
The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali
Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer
To See and See Again by Tara Bahrampour
The Limits of Whiteness by Neda Maghbouleh
Iran Awakening by Shirin Abadi
For the Sun After Long Nights by Fatemah Jamalpour & Nilo Tabrizy
The House on Sun Street by Mojgan Ghazirad
Immortals of Tehran by Ali Araghi
Breathing Space: Iranian Women Photographers
Given Iran's restrictive government and isolated culture, this round of the book club stood out for the tonal and thematic similarity between books (with notable exceptions like the comedy of My Uncle Napoleon and the hallucinatory modernism of Blind Owl, both written before the revolution). Many of the Iranian authors whose books make it to international audiences are writing and publishing in the diaspora, and the revolution and its echoes are central subjects. What is individual responsibility in a time of political upheaval? What choices do people make for their own survival and that of their families? These big and moral ambiguous questions animated a lot of the books our group read this month.
Censorship is a complicated mechanism in any society. While authors in Iran have to submit drafts to a government bureau for review, the enforcement is unpredictable. This means that select books are successfully published and held up as examples of a "tolerant" system, while countless other writers simply self-censor their output. We spoke at length about the choice to either veil your meaning with symbolism or simply turn towards more introspective, personal themes.
And across it all, we identified how Iranian authors navigate a fractured identity — Islamic under the pressures of the state, and Persian by way of heritage. There has been a post-revolution push to "Arabize" the culture and language, driving many in the intelligentsia to a sort of ethno-nationalist embrace of Farsi as an act of resistance. But this dichotomy is also overly simple; exchange between the Arab and Muslim and Persian worlds has been long and fluid. Across the political spectrum, there is a lot of interest in the storied past glories of the Persian empire, which pops up in the poetry and mythology used by these authors.
I hate to think that attention turns to Iran only when there is tragedy. I encourage you to read more (we have plenty of suggestions), or to explore the broad reach of Persian culture around the world: the Parsi cafes of Bombay, the Nowruz festivities in Afghanistan, or the lingering influence of ghazal poetry in Uzbekistan. And — as always — read on to find more context for your reading explorations:
The Poet, His Cut-Off Head in His Hand, Went Singing Songs and Ghazals: Literature in Iran by Shahriar Mandanipour on Words Without Borders
The secret lies in the Persian language. After every occupation and plunder and pillage, the only thing left to the Iranian people has been its language. The Persian literary language known as Dari, which followed Pahlavi Persian and from about thirteen hundred years ago became the modern-day language of Iranians, has, despite the best efforts of conquerors and usurpers, been protected and preserved by every means possible. And literature has been the best and most beautiful medium of safeguarding it.
The Contemporary Literary Scene in Iran by Salar Abdoh, Markaz Review
These two moments, wildly dissimilar and yet part of the same continuum, are Iran in a nutshell. And from the point of view of many Iranians who stay put rather than leave, it is these very contrasts and incongruities that make the country interesting, troubling, tragic, impossibly volatile, and ultimately exquisite and one-of-a-kind.
Iran Transformed, by Arang Keshavarzian in The New York Review of Books
This is a far cry from the image of a passive and despairing citizenry disseminated during these years by Western media outlets. In the US and Europe these protests received scant coverage, generally only attracting notice when they became demonstrations explicitly targeting the regime—and implicitly laying the groundwork for imagining foreign intervention as a necessary savior.
Iran's Ultimate Banned Book by Amir Ahmadi Arian on The Dial
No other text has exercised such an incredible pull on the Iranian imagination. The Blind Owl has been subject to countless studies, interpretations, rewritings, and controversies. [...] Reza Baraheni, arguably the most prominent literary critic of the last century in Iran, genuflected before The Blind Owl. “It is not a book to reread,” he wrote, “but to rewrite, for its gravity is so extreme in its orbit all our critical tools are blunted.”
33 Essential Works of Fiction by Iranian Writers by Niloufar Talebi on Literary Hub
A Glimpse of Iran, through the eyes of its artists and journalists by Anastasia Tsioulkas, NPR
Oscar-nominated It Was Just An Accident, which wrestles with how people are changed by political imprisonment:
And do mark your calendars (and start your reading) for our next book club, meeting May 17th to discuss Brazilian literature.