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Emerging in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a secular activity, Persian literature acquired its own modernity by redefining past aesthetic practices of identity and history. By analyzing selected work of major pre- and post-revolutionary literary figures, Talattof shows how Persian literary history has not been an integrated continuum but a series of distinct episodic movements shaped by shifting ideologies. Drawing on western concepts, modern Persian literature has responded to changing social and political conditions through complex strategies of metaphorical and allegorical representations that both construct and denounce cultural continuities. The book provides a unique contribution in that it draws on texts that demonstrate close affinity to such diverse ideologies as modernism, Marxism, feminism, and Islam. Each ideological standard has influenced the form, characterization, and figurative language of literary texts as well as setting the criteria for literary criticism and determining which issues are to be the focus of literary journals.
When Arcade Publishing originally contracted this extraordinary collection of poetry and literature, the Department of the Treasury was attempting to censor the publication of works from countries on America’s “enemies list.” Arcade, along with the PEN American Center, the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, and the Association of American University Presses, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the United States government. Their landmark case forced the Office of Foreign Assets Control to change their regulations regarding editing and publishing literature in translation, and Arcade is proud to reissue this anthology that showcases t...
Women writers occupy prominent positions in late 20th century Iranian literature, despite the increased legal and cultural restrictions placed upon women since the 1978-1979 Islamic Revolution. One of these writers is Moniru Ravanipur, author of the critically acclaimed The Drowned and Heart of Steel. Satan's Stones is the first English translation of her 1991 short story collection Sangha-ye Sheytan. Often set in the remote regions of Iran, these stories explore many facets of contemporary Iranian life, particularly the ever-shifting relations between women and men. Their bold literary experimentation marks a new style in Persian fiction akin to "magical realism." Reports from Iran indicated that Satan's Stones had been banned there by government authorities. While its frank explorations of Iranian society may have offended Islamic leaders, they offer Western readers fresh perspectives on Iranian culture from one of the country's most distinguished writers.
The truth always loses itself among memories. The truth can be lost as though it never existed. Not on the ground or anywhere else. The difference between a historical event and an insignificant happening in the life of an individual is that the historical event has witnesses who can differentiate the truth from the fiction. One evening, thirty year old Afsaneh Sarboland, dressed only in a thin orange dress, flees her husband and home and attempts to create a new life. In the story, Afsaneh, a single writer, struggles to carve a space for herself in the chaotic society that has been ravaged by the scars of war. Childhood tragedies, the devastations of war, and an abusive husband have combine...
CONTENTS Editors’ Foreword M.R. Ghanoonparvar: A Selected Bibliography The Liminal World of The Blind Owl by Mardin Aminpour The Pre-Islamic Past in Modern Iranian Culture: A Cultural Materialist Reading by Mahyar Entezari Mapping Dystopia in Ebrahim Golestan’s Mud Brick and Mirror by Somy Kim “As Fellow Asians?” Irano-Japanese Relations in the Interwar Period by Mikiya Koyagi Shah Isma’il Comes to Herat: An Anecdote from Vasefi’s “Amazing Events” (Badayi’ al-Vaqayi’) by Azfar Moin Enlightenment and Shades of Gray: Magic Realism in Women without Men by Dylan Oehler-Stricklin Remembrance, Reflection, and Retention: Involuntary Memory in Ayenehha-ye Dardar by Farkhondeh Shayesteh The Documentary Moment: War and Viewer Subjectivity in Bahman Ghobadi’s Turtles Can Fly by Blake Atwood Teaching Culture in the Persian Language Classroom by Shahla Adel Indefinite/Restrictive Maker as Evidence for a Raising/Promotion Analysis of Persian Restrictive Relative Clauses by Behrad Aghaei
In Another Place: Identity, Space, and Transcultural Signification in Goli Taraqqi's Fiction, Goulia Ghardashkhani examines the narrative process of the struggle for identification in the short stories of one of the well-established figures of Iranian contemporary prose literature. Goli Taraqqi's narratives of displacement and emigration are approached through a theoretical lens that foregrounds the significance of space and the role of retrospective self-narration in acts of cultural representation. Ghardashkhani studies Taraqqi's autobiographical narratives with an emphasis on the unstable meanings of homeland and Farang (a culturally constructed term signifying the West) and, thereby, accounts for Taraqqi's ironical style of narration in her memories of homeland recollected in exile.
This book discusses what it means to “perform the State,” what this action means in relation to the country of Iran and how these various performances are represented. The concept of the “State” as a modern phenomenon has had a powerful impact on the formation of the individual and collective, as well as on determining how political entities are perceived in their interactions with one another in the current global arena.
Subject of a full-length segment on Morning Edition when it first appeared in hardcover, Literature from the “Axis of Evil” quickly went to the top of the Amazon bestseller list. Its publication was celebrated by authors including Azar Nafisi and Alice Walker, and the Bloomsbury Review named it a “book of the year.” In thirty-five works of fiction and poetry, writers from countries Americans have not been allowed to hear from—until the Treasury Department revised its regulations recently—offer an invaluable window on daily life in “enemy nations” and humanize the individuals living there. The book includes works from Syria, Lybia, the Sudan, Cuba, as well as from Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. As editor Alane Mason writes in the introduction, “Not knowing what the rest of the world is thinking and writing is both dangerous and boring.”
The Routledge Intermediate Persian Course, second edition, is an intermediate level Persian textbook written specifically for English-speaking university students that incorporates the guidelines of the American Council of Teaching Foreign Languages and those of the Common European Framework of Reference in its tasks and activities. The diversity of the texts in this textbook helps to familiarize students with a range of literary genres and provides them with the necessary building blocks to continue reading on their own. One of the distinctive features of this book is its content-based and task-based approach to learning the language; all the material provided has been carefully selected to...