Censoring an Iranian Love Story
Censoring an Iranian Love Story
Censoring an Iranian Love Story
Description
Description
From one of Iran's most acclaimed and controversial contemporary writers, his first novel to appear in English--a dazzlingly inventive work of fiction that opens a revelatory window onto what it's like to live, to love, and to be an artist in today's Iran.
The novel entwines two equally powerful narratives. A writer named Shahriar--the author's fictional alter ego--has struggled for years against the all-powerful censor at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Now, on the threshold of fifty, tired of writing dark and bitter stories, he has come to realize that the "world around us has enough death and destruction and sorrow." He sets out instead to write a bewitching love story, one set in present-day Iran. It may be his greatest challenge yet.
Beautiful black-haired Sara and fiercely proud Dara fall in love in the dusty stacks of the library, where they pass secret messages to each other encoded in the pages of their favorite books. But Iran's Campaign Against Social Corruption forbids their being alone together. Defying the state and their disapproving parents, they meet in secret amid the bustling streets, Internet cafes, and lush private gardens of Tehran.
Yet writing freely of Sara and Dara's encounters, their desires, would put Shahriar in as much peril as his lovers. Thus we read not just the scenes Shahriar has written but also the sentences and words he's crossed out or merely imagined, knowing they can never be published.
Laced with surprising humor and irony, at once provocative and deeply moving, "Censoring an Iranian Love Story" takes us unforgettably to the heart of one of the world's most alluring yet least understood cultures. It is an ingenious, wholly original novel--a literary tour de force that is a triumph of art and spirit.
The novel entwines two equally powerful narratives. A writer named Shahriar--the author's fictional alter ego--has struggled for years against the all-powerful censor at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Now, on the threshold of fifty, tired of writing dark and bitter stories, he has come to realize that the "world around us has enough death and destruction and sorrow." He sets out instead to write a bewitching love story, one set in present-day Iran. It may be his greatest challenge yet.
Beautiful black-haired Sara and fiercely proud Dara fall in love in the dusty stacks of the library, where they pass secret messages to each other encoded in the pages of their favorite books. But Iran's Campaign Against Social Corruption forbids their being alone together. Defying the state and their disapproving parents, they meet in secret amid the bustling streets, Internet cafes, and lush private gardens of Tehran.
Yet writing freely of Sara and Dara's encounters, their desires, would put Shahriar in as much peril as his lovers. Thus we read not just the scenes Shahriar has written but also the sentences and words he's crossed out or merely imagined, knowing they can never be published.
Laced with surprising humor and irony, at once provocative and deeply moving, "Censoring an Iranian Love Story" takes us unforgettably to the heart of one of the world's most alluring yet least understood cultures. It is an ingenious, wholly original novel--a literary tour de force that is a triumph of art and spirit.
About the Author
About the Author
Shahriar Mandanipour has won numerous awards for his novels, short stories, and nonfiction in Iran, although he was unable to publish his fiction from 1992 until 1997 as a result of censorship. He came to the United States in 2006 as the third International Writers Project Fellow at Brown University. His work has appeared in PEN America, The Literary Review, and The Kenyon Review. www.mandanipour.net
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
One of the Best Debuts of 2009 --NPR "Exciting. . . . Powerful. . . . Mandanipour's writing is exuberant, bonhomous, clever, profuse with puns and literary-political references." --James Wood, The New Yorker "A clever Rubik's Cube of a story, [and] a haunting portrait of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran. . . . An Escher-like meditation on the interplay of life and art, reality and fiction. . . . At its best, Censoring an Iranian Love Story becomes a Kundera-like rumination on philosophy and politics [that] playfully investigates the possibilities and limits of storytelling." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "A love story that is convincingly, achingly impossible in a place where men and women cannot even look at each other in public. The effect (as every good Victorian understood) is deliriously sensual prose. . . . Mandanipour has triumphed." --Los Angeles Times "Wry, playful. . . . Reminiscent of Milan Kundera, this is a lively account of life and letters in contemporary Iran." --Financial Times "In this brilliantly conceived and cleverly written novel, characters and author together and separately act and write with sly purpose, disguising and disavowing their subversive ends--to live, love, and create in today's repressive Iranian society." --The Boston Globe "Devious and engaging. . . . A droll, even cheerful portrait of totalitarian craziness." --Bloomberg News "Not your typical love story. . . . A meditation on culture, modern Iran, and the power of what is left out. . . . By the end of this witty, hyper-intelligent riff on life under a repressive regime, the writer has demonstrated the mental and emotional contortions necessary to survive." --The Christian Science Monitor "Telling amorous tales in post-Islamic-revolution Iran is tricky, if not downright dangerous, but [Mandanipour] is up to the task. . . . And as much as humor dominates the book, it quietly gets at something else--the omnipotence of tyranny." --The Miami Herald "A very special novel--a passionate, inventive and humorous exposure of the stupidity and cruelty of a society ruled by fear." --The Times (London) "Neither sentimental nor nostalgic, romanticized nor demonized. Looking at his country and its inhabitants through a fiction writer's authentic spectacles, Mandanipour has written a novel that is witty, smart, funny, and honest. It is an important book for our times." --Rabih Alameddine, author of The Hakawati "Rich and riveting." --The Irish Times "A brilliant novel about the complexities of writing and publishing in Iran. It will help to further understanding of the frustrating and sometimes perilous situation of the book industry in a country where copyright is not respected, where writers struggle desperately to publish and can be jailed simply for exercising their imaginations." --The Guardian (London)
One of the Best Debuts of 2009 --NPR "Exciting. . . . Powerful. . . . Mandanipour's writing is exuberant, bonhomous, clever, profuse with puns and literary-political references." --James Wood, The New Yorker "A clever Rubik's Cube of a story, [and] a haunting portrait of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran. . . . An Escher-like meditation on the interplay of life and art, reality and fiction. . . . At its best, Censoring an Iranian Love Story becomes a Kundera-like rumination on philosophy and politics [that] playfully investigates the possibilities and limits of storytelling." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "A love story that is convincingly, achingly impossible in a place where men and women cannot even look at each other in public. The effect (as every good Victorian understood) is deliriously sensual prose. . . . Mandanipour has triumphed." --Los Angeles Times "Wry, playful. . . . Reminiscent of Milan Kundera, this is a lively account of life and letters in contemporary Iran." --Financial Times "In this brilliantly conceived and cleverly written novel, characters and author together and separately act and write with sly purpose, disguising and disavowing their subversive ends--to live, love, and create in today's repressive Iranian society." --The Boston Globe "Devious and engaging. . . . A droll, even cheerful portrait of totalitarian craziness." --Bloomberg News "Not your typical love story. . . . A meditation on culture, modern Iran, and the power of what is left out. . . . By the end of this witty, hyper-intelligent riff on life under a repressive regime, the writer has demonstrated the mental and emotional contortions necessary to survive." --The Christian Science Monitor "Telling amorous tales in post-Islamic-revolution Iran is tricky, if not downright dangerous, but [Mandanipour] is up to the task. . . . And as much as humor dominates the book, it quietly gets at something else--the omnipotence of tyranny." --The Miami Herald "A very special novel--a passionate, inventive and humorous exposure of the stupidity and cruelty of a society ruled by fear." --The Times (London) "Neither sentimental nor nostalgic, romanticized nor demonized. Looking at his country and its inhabitants through a fiction writer's authentic spectacles, Mandanipour has written a novel that is witty, smart, funny, and honest. It is an important book for our times." --Rabih Alameddine, author of The Hakawati "Rich and riveting." --The Irish Times "A brilliant novel about the complexities of writing and publishing in Iran. It will help to further understanding of the frustrating and sometimes perilous situation of the book industry in a country where copyright is not respected, where writers struggle desperately to publish and can be jailed simply for exercising their imaginations." --The Guardian (London)
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Vintage
Pub date:
2010-06-01
Length:
304 pages
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