Missing Soluch


Book Description

Perhaps the most important work in modern Iranian literature, this starkly beautiful novel examines the trials of an impoverished woman and her children living in a remote village in Iran, after the unexplained disappearance of her husband, Soluch. Lyrical yet unsparing, the novel examines her life as she contends with the political corruption, authoritarianism, and poverty of the village. It follows her vacillations between love for Soluch and anger at his absence, and her struggle to raise her children without their father. The novel critically evokes the unfulfilled aspirations of modern Iran, portraying a society caught between a past and a future that seem equally weighed down by injustice. This landmark novel -- the first ever written in the everyday language of the Iranian people -- revolutionized Persian literature in its beautiful and daring portrayal of the life of a marginal woman and her struggle to survive.




The Colonel


Book Description

A pitch black, rainy night in a small Iranian town. Inside his house the Colonel is immersed in thought. Memories are storming in. Memories of his wife. Memories of the great patriots of the past, all of them assassinated or executed. Memories of his children, who had joined the different factions of the 1979 revolution. There is a knock on the door. Two young policemen have come to summon the Colonel to collect the tortured body of his youngest daughter and bury her before sunrise. The Islamic Revolution, like every other revolution in history, is devouring its own children. And whose fault is that? This shocking diatribe against the failures of the Iranian left over the last fifty years does not leave one taboo unbroken.




Recasting American and Persian Literatures


Book Description

Reading literary and cinematic events between and beyond American and Persian literatures, this book questions the dominant geography of the East-West divide, which charts the global circulation of texts as World Literature. Beyond the limits of national literary historiography, and neocolonial cartography of world literary discourse, the minor character Parsee Fedallah in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) is a messenger who travels from the margins of the American literature canon to his Persian literary counterparts in contemporary Iranian fiction and film, above all, the rural woman Mergan in Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s novel Missing Soluch (1980). In contention with Eurocentric treatments of world literatures, and in recognition of efforts to recast the worldliness of American and Persian literatures, this book maintains that aesthetic properties are embedded in their local histories and formative geographies.




Thirst


Book Description

Thirst is the latest novel translated into English by award-winning novelist Mahmoud Dowlatabadi. Following the critical success of his acclaimed 2013 novel The Colonel, for which he won the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, Thirst is profound, humane and mischievous in its humour, shining a light on the madness and the absurdity of a brutal war. On a strategic hill overlooking the frontier, Iraqi and Iranian troops battle for access to a water tank. The troops are delirious with thirst and on the brink of madness. They are, moreover, characters in a novel being written by an Iraqi journalist. That is, if he is given the chance to write it, a chance denied him by an Iraqi major who is in charge of a military prison and who commands the journalist to write a fictitious report about a murder in the camp aimed at demoralising the enemy soldiers. At the same time, on the other side of the border, an Iranian author writes the story of the same troop of soldiers but from an Iranian perspective. He, likewise, is interrupted, not by external forces, but by memories of his first encounter with a gun... Told in a kaleidoscopic style that weaves between the ongoing battle and the struggles of the writer, Thirst is rich with dark humour and surreal images. The emphasis on maintaining humanity and individual identity in the midst of a dehumanising conflict shows, once again, why Mahmoud Dowlatabadi is the most important Iranian novelist writing today.




Representations of Violence In Literature, Culture And Arts Conference Proceedings 2021 Edebiyat, Kültür ve Sanatta Şiddet Temsilleri Konferans Bildiriler Kitabı 2021


Book Description

In his foreword to World Report on Violence and Health, published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2002, Nelson Mandela states that “the twentieth century will be remembered as a century marked by violence”. Now we are nearly at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, but violence still permeates in our lives at various levels. Various forms of violence occurring at levels of interpersonal, self-directed, collective, state, warfare, child and youth violence, intimate partner violence, environmental violence, and animal violence lay bare the complexity and pervasiveness of the phenomenon, yet it also brings along the necessity to discuss violence from multiple perspectives. Nelson Mandela Dünya Sağlık Örgütü’nün 2002 yılında yayınladığı Şiddet ve Sağlık Hakkında Dünya Raporu’nun önsözünde “yirminci yüzyılın şiddetle mimlenen bir yüzyıl olarak hatırlanacağını” söyler. Bizler, neredeyse yirmi birinci yüzyılın ilk çeyreğinin sonlarını yaşamaktayız, ancak şiddet hayatımıza hala çeşitli düzeylerde nüfuz ediyor. Kişilerarası, öze yöneltilen, kolektif, devlet, savaş, çocuk ve genç şiddeti, yakın eş şiddeti, çevresel şiddet ve hayvan şiddeti gibi çeşitli düzlemlerde vuku bulan şiddet biçimleri olgunun karmaşıklığını ve yaygınlığını açıkça ortaya koymakla beraber şiddet kavramının farklı açılardan tartışılması gerekliliğini de ortaya koymaktadır. Contents/İçindekiler SECTION 1: Literature Chapter 1: “A Clockwork Orange by Burgess: Revisiting Violence in a Dystopian Fiction” Anushka Ghuin Chapter 2: “The Scrutiny of Violence in Contemporary Period Through The Scar Test” Kadriye Bozkurt Chapter 3: “Nonviolence vs. Non-Ethics in Harry Turtledove’s ‘The Last Article’” Nataliya Krynytska Chapter 4: “Zami: A New Spelling Against Racism” Pulkita Anand Chapter 5: “Son Fısıltının Hakikati: Flannery O’Connor’ın ‘Greenleaf’ Öyküsünde Otoimmünite ve Şiddet” Hivren Demir-Atay SECTION 2: Culture Chapter 6: “Who is Responsible? The Politics of Structural Violence in Selected Films” Trayee Sinha Chapter 7: “Violence in textile: A Closer Look at the Warrior Shawls of Nagaland” Rugmani Venkatadri Chapter 8: "Sanatta Şiddetin Temsili: Bir Kez Daha Guernica ve Diğer Şeyler" Ali Asker Bal Chapter 9: “Şiddetin Mitik Temsilleri Üzerine Karşılaştırmalı bir Değerlendirme” Ülfet Dağ SECTION 3: Gender Chapter 10: “Margaret Atwood’s Testaments: A Portrayal of State Violence Against Women” Elvan Karaman Chapter 11: “Body as a Territory: A Study of Violence Against Women as Portrayed in Partition Literature of India and Pakistan” Adhyeta Mishra Chapter 12: “Revisiting Gendered Violence in Modern Iranian Fiction: Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s Missing Soluch” Selin Şencan Chapter 13: “Violence Against Women: Actions and New Tools, The 7 Golden Rules of Conduct to Follow” Efstratia Oktapoda




The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction


Book Description

A user-friendly reference for English-language readers who are eager to explore contemporary fiction from around the world. Profiling hundreds of titles and authors from 1945 to today, with an emphasis on fiction published in the past two decades, this guide introduces the styles, trends, and genres of the world's literatures, from Scandinavian crime thrillers and cutting-edge Chinese works to Latin American narco-fiction and award-winning French novels. The book's critical selection of titles defines the arc of a country's literary development. Entries illuminate the fiction of individual nations, cultures, and peoples, while concise biographies sketch the careers of noteworthy authors. Compiled by M. A. Orthofer, an avid book reviewer and the founder of the literary review site the Complete Review, this reference is perfect for readers who wish to expand their reading choices and knowledge of contemporary world fiction. “A bird's-eye view of titles and authors from everywhere―a book overfull with reminders of why we love to read international fiction. Keep it close by.”—Robert Con Davis-Udiano, executive director, World Literature Today “M. A. Orthofer has done more to bring literature in translation to America than perhaps any other individual. [This book] will introduce more new worlds to you than any other book on the market.”—Tyler Cowen, George Mason University “A relaxed, riverine guide through the main currents of international writing, with sections for more than a hundred countries on six continents.”—Karan Mahajan, Page-Turner blog, The New Yorker




Interactions Between Iranian and American Literatures


Book Description

Introducing "narrative mobility" as a new approach in comparative studies of Iran and the US, this book reinterprets the politics and aesthetics of relations between the nations through an analysis of Iranian and American authors. The book focuses specifically on three authors—Simin Daneshvar, Shahriar Mandanipour, and Don DeLillo—who each employ narrative mobility to rethink intercultural negotiation, addressing parallel issues in America and Iran from different, but complementary, perspectives. The book analyzes the employment of parallel narrational techniques, presenting physically and virtually mobile characters who embody their respective countries as they move from one culture to another. The strange affinity between Iran and the US is ultimately revealed by viewing literary works as a "contact zone" through which the complicated relations and shared history of the two nations can be renegotiated. On a more theoretical level, the book reflects on the role of literature—in particular the novel as a transnational medium—as a bridge between nations in a period of globalization. With its focus on cross-cultural connections, the book will be of interest to anyone studying or researching comparative literature, US–Iran relations, and cultural studies generally.




Contemporary World Fiction


Book Description

This much-needed guide to translated literature offers readers the opportunity to hear from, learn about, and perhaps better understand our shrinking world from the perspective of insiders from many cultures and traditions. In a globalized world, knowledge about non-North American societies and cultures is a must. Contemporary World Fiction: A Guide to Literature in Translation provides an overview of the tremendous range and scope of translated world fiction available in English. In so doing, it will help readers get a sense of the vast world beyond North America that is conveyed by fiction titles from dozens of countries and language traditions. Within the guide, approximately 1,000 contemporary non-English-language fiction titles are fully annotated and thousands of others are listed. Organization is primarily by language, as language often reflects cultural cohesion better than national borders or geographies, but also by country and culture. In addition to contemporary titles, each chapter features a brief overview of earlier translated fiction from the group. The guide also provides in-depth bibliographic essays for each chapter that will enable librarians and library users to further explore the literature of numerous languages and cultural traditions.




Hafez in Love


Book Description

Shams al-Din Mohammad Hafez is in love. He is in love with a girl, with a city, and with Persian poetry. Despite his enmity with the new and dangerous city leader, the jealousy of his fellow court poets, and the competition for his beloved, Iran’s favorite poet remains unbothered. When his wit and charm are not enough to keep him safe in Shiraz, his friends conspire to keep him out of trouble. But their schemes are unsuccessful. Nothing will chase Hafez from this city of wine and roses. In Pezeshkzad’s fictional account, Hafez’s life in fourteenth-century Shiraz is a mix of peril and humor. Set in a city that is at once beautiful and cutthroat, the novel includes a cast of historical figures to illuminate this elusive poet of the Persian literary tradition. Shabani-Jadidi and Higgins’s translation brings the beloved poetry of Hafez alive for an English audience and reacquaints readers with the comic wit and original storytelling of Pezeshkzad.