IRAN BANS WOMAN WRITER`S BESTSELLER

Zee News, India
Nov 28 2006

Tehran, Nov 27: Iran’s conservative cultural body has banned a female
writer’s award-winning bestseller, which deals with a married woman’s
secret and unrequited love for another man, a press report said
on Monday.

"The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has prohibited
publication of ‘I will turn out the lights’ by Zoya Pirzad," the
Kargozaran paper quoted publisher Alireza Ramezani as saying.

"We have not been informed of the reasons for the ban," he said,
adding the vetting officials had refused to renew the publication
permit for the book, which has sold more than 200,000 copies in 23
editions since 2001.

Pirzad’s novel, which has bagged four prestigious literary awards in
Iran, tells the story of a bored Armenian housewife who falls in love
with a melancholic widower in early 1960s in the oil-city of Abadan.

Production of music, films and books is subject to supervision by the
Ministry of Culture, which has introduced a new initiative requiring
publishers to renew permits for new editions of the same book.

The Ministry has held up the publication of hundreds of new titles
and reprints over the past months, publishers say.

Among the books banned are Persian translations of Tracy Chevalier’s
bestseller "girl with a pearl earring", which had reached a sixth
edition, and Dan Brown’s "The Da Vinci Code".

Widely-acclaimed Iranian classic, the "Blind Owl", written in 1930s
by Sadegh Hedayat has also been banned.

Iranian press and publication enjoyed some freedom under the reformist
presidency of Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005, with scores of
women joining the Iranian literati and sweeping awards.