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Loading... Censoring an Iranian Love Storyby Shahriar Mandanipour
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I thought this was a pretty good book. Spoilers alert. It is possibly a little derivative in its postmodernism but I'm not sure how not to be, and I enjoyed it. I think that Mandanipour gave a good picture of modern Iran, and used traditional narrative forms, plus very (post) modern ones in a mish mash that reflects reality. sjmccreary provided an excellent review with a great plot summary, (going chronologically, see the review just before mine), so I'll just add a few more points. "Censoring an Iranian Love Story" is very much a book about how writers pursue their craft -- how they develop characters, how they decide what situations to put their characters in, and how they decide the fate of those characters. But author Shariar Mandanipour is writing in Iran, a country in which one isn't able to speak freely without fear of censorship or reprisal. So his exploration isn't simply of the writing process, but of how people are forced to function under a repressive government. This makes "Censoring an Iranian Love Story" an intriguing look at the subterfuge exercised by ordinary Iranians struggling to have meaningful lives, but also means the novel isn't a rich plunge into the emotions of two would-be lovers. The novel is satisfying and enlightening on an intellectual level; it vividly conjures the sensation of always looking over your shoulder for the thought police and how that cripples the soul -- not just of artists, but of everyone. And it gives a chilling take on the nature of governmental control. But be forewarned, any reader looking for a traditional tale of love and loss will find this novel frustrating. An interesting book that works on more levels than I am able to understand. On the surface, it is the narrative of an author in Shiraz, Iran who is trying to write a love story. However, in Iran, all books must be approved by state censors before being published, so our author is constantly vigilant about what the censor, Mr Petrovich, will allow or disallow. The author, unnamed, talks about the history of the censorship of literature, the history of Iranian literature in general, and the different ways that life for Iranians has changed since the 1979 revolution. These comments are interspersed with the actual story being written by him. The story is about Dara and Sara - generic names that were borrowed from the early readers that school children in Iran used to use before the revolution, comparable to Dick and Jane in the US. Their story is presented to us as it is being written, complete with strikeouts made by the author to remove portions that would not pass censorship and the subsequent re-writes. Dara is a 30-something house painter in Tehran who completed the coursework for a degree in cinema studies at Tehran University but whose student records were expunged after being arrested and imprisoned as a political dissident for distributing forbidden films. It didn't help him that his father is a communist. Sara is current student at Tehran University studying Iranian Literature. Her parents are in the process of arranging a marriage for her to Sinbad, a relatively powerful former government official whose influence would be very beneficial to the family. The author's intention is to write a very nice love story between these 2 nice young people. However, somewhere in the middle of the book, things become muddled. Dara and Sara don't behave as expected. Mr Petrovich becomes aware of the story as it is being written, and he and the author begin stepping into the story, and Dara and Sara into "real life". This is where things are said and done that I didn't fully understand. Especially the part about the hunchback midget. Overall, I liked the book. Very different than the stuff I normally read. An fascinating insight into Iranian life and customs. This would be a great discussion book, and a good choice for someone who likes to read "books about books or writing". The first half of the book was caustic and funny but the author ran out of steam about halfway through as the story progressed and the outcome for lovers Sara and Dara became progressively more gloomy. That is where reality took a bit of a dive and the narrator, and eventually the censor, became enmeshed in the fictional story, and reality and fiction became blurred. Nevertheless, the story cleverly illustrated the absurdity of life in Iran, with its strict Islamic code, its rigid rules and over-enthusiastic moral watchdogs. An excellent book about literature and the difficulty of wrining while living under strict censorship. It is written on at least three levels. A Love Story, A Censored love Story , the difficulty of writing, and losing control of your characters. Allusions to Iranian History and literature are wonderful, making us even more sad about the demise of such a rich culture under the hands of fundamentalist thugs. no reviews | add a review
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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 cafés, 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.
"Wheatfields or Apple Orchards": An Essay by Shahriar Mandanipour
At book readings, authors are often asked, Why do you write? One says, I write to inform and enlighten people. Another explains, I write because it is my socio-political responsibility. One more declares, I write for myself. Yet another suggests, I write for the sake of literature and the beauty of language. And one writer dares, I write to achieve immortality. Their many different answers each contain a story, because they are storytellers. And I, too, have a story of my own. I need to begin back in fourth grade. Until then, my mother would always write my school compositions for me. But one day when I came home for lunch, she had gone out, and I was forced, for the very first time, to write my composition myself. In Iran, it is customary for teachers to select the subject of composition assignments based on the season of the year. At the time, it was Autumn—describe the Fall, instructed the teacher. I had little time before the afternoon school session began, and so I sat down to write. After struggling through the first few sentences, suddenly I saw myself writing words that I had never thought of before. Furiously, I wrote of a field whose wheat stalks have turned golden and are ready to be harvested. I wrote of a shepherd sitting in the shade of a tree and playing his flute while his sheep bleat and graze nearby. In this vein, I wrote and wrote until suddenly I realized I needed to hurry back to school.
Before that afternoon, whenever the teacher made me read my compositions in front of the class, I had mostly received a B or B-minus. But on this day, I was sure I would earn an A-plus. For the very first time, I shot up my hand to read my composition. I read of the melody of the shepherd’s flute, of how happy the sheep are, and of the golden wheatfield that is ready for the harvest. But as soon as I read this sentence, the teacher started to growl. "Wheatfields are not harvested in the Autumn!" she shouted. I continued to read anyway. I was proud of the words I had written, about how the wind blows in the golden wheatfield, and about how the golden wheat stalks, ready, eager, to be plowed, to dance. "You stupid boy, wheatfields are not plowed in the autumn," she snapped again. She gave me a C-minus.
Years have passed since that day. I have published ten volumes of short stories and novels. I have managed to cross over the walls of a sterner censorship than my teacher’s that afternoon in Iran. And now that I have also crossed over the threshold of fifty, I know how I’d answer that question about why I write. I write to bring a wheatfield to harvest in my own words, in my own autumn. If I have succeeded, or will succeed, it will be because perhaps there are some who may benefit from the crop. Each grain of wheat is a word and each word a grain toward a story. In the Islamic account of Adam and Eve, the two are driven from heaven to earth after eating not an apple but grains of wheat. What the first pair of lovers ate in Eden eat isn’t important. What is important is for each of us—all the storytellers of the world—to bring our own apple orchards, or wheatfields, to harvest, in our own time and our own seasons.
Perhaps there will be those who will eat from them, and are driven to heaven. —Shahriar Mandanipour
(Translated from the Farsi by Sara Khalili)(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:38:22 -0400)
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