IRAN’S LITERARY RENAISSANCE
David Mattin
The National
August 17. 2009 11:28PM UAE
The author Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis was adapted into
the hit animated movie of the same name.
Shahriar Mandanipour was 39 years old and a literary star in Iran
when, in 1995, he was invited to address the Writers’ Association
of Armenia. Accompanying him would be 22 of Iran’s most important
novelists and poets, also invited by the Armenians in a spirit of
literary brotherhood. The Iranian writers packed into a bus and set
off through the Zagros mountains. In the early hours of the morning –
when most were asleep – their driver jammed the accelerator pedal,
directed the bus towards a deep ravine and jumped out of the door. The
bus careened towards the edge of the ravine, then struck a boulder
at the edge and came to a shuddering halt. The writers clambered out,
were arrested by Iranian security forces, interrogated and released.
The events of that night have entered Iranian literary history: they
were later revealed to be the result of a plot to assassinate an entire
generation of Iranian writers, hatched at the highest levels. Today,
speaking from his office at Harvard University, Mandanipour recalls
this near-death experience with a disarming mixture of passion and
bluntness; the same apparatus he brings, it soon becomes evident,
to any subject under his consideration.
Now a visiting scholar at Harvard, Mandanipour – considered one of
Iran’s most important living novelists – has just published a new
novel, Censoring an Iranian Love Story. It was written in the US,
where he has been living since 2006, and marks a watershed in his
career: Censoring is the first of Mandanipour’s novels to be translated
into English.
Taken alone, the introduction of such a novelist to English readers
is significant (for perspective imagine that English readers had
been deprived until now of the work of, say, Michel Houellebecq or
Javier Marias). The critic James Woodhas already written a celebratory
review of Censoring in The New Yorker. But Mandanipour’s new novel
is just the latest in a string of recent Iranian-diaspora fiction
to take the publishing world by storm. This summer has already seen
the Iranian-American writer Laleh Khadivi’s The Age of Orphans
win its author a Whiting Writers’ Award, as well as Rooftops of
Tehran by the Iranian-American writer Mahbod Seraji. In 2008 we
got Dalia Sofer’s Septembers of Shiraz, and Porochista Khakpour’s
Sons and Other Flammable Objects. And no such list can omit mention
of the French-Iranian writer Marjane Satrapi’s 2004 graphic novel
Persepolis, last year adapted into a film voiced by Sean Penn and
Catherine Deneuve.
So why, 30 years after the revolution that established the Islamic
Republic, is Iranian diaspora fiction coming into such wonderful
bloom? What does Mandanipour hope for the first of his novels to
reach a western readership? And how does one of Iran’s most famous
writers feel now that he, too, has adopted the strange circumstance
of the diaspora writer, forever gazing at his homeland from afar?
Censoring is a multi-layered work that, Mandanipour says, aims to shine
a light on both life and literature in contemporary Iran. It tells
the story of a novelist – clearly Mandanipour’s alter-ego – working on
what he intends to be a simple love story between two young Tehranis,
called Dara and Sara. In the Islamic Republic, though, this author must
fight a constant, often frustrating, sometimes absurd battle with the
censor over what is permitted in fiction, and what is prescribed. We
are given, then, both the love story itself and the author’s commentary
on its creation; meanwhile we’re reminded of the insidious, terrible
influence of the censor via an arresting technique: sentences that
are written and then struck out, so that we are made to feel party
to the censorship of this story as it is happening, under our eyes.
It’s easy to see why censorship is important to Mandanipour;
back in Iran he was banned from publishing entirely between 1992
and 1997: "Censorship is emotionally crushing for the writer," he
explains, "because it weakens the connection that he has with his
readers. Readers become less trusting of the writer, because they
know he is being censored.
"Eventually, censorship enters every part of the writer’s life;
even the way that he thinks. The writer begins to censor himself."
That strange dance of speech and silence, Mandanipour says, came
to overshadow his writing life in Iran: "I would write entire short
stories on my computer, and then delete them. If my house was raided,
those stories might be used as evidence against me.
"With Censoring an Iranian Love Story, I wanted to show how it is
impossible for a writer to write a straightforward love story in
Iran. That story will always become something else, more complex."
But Censoring will also provide western readers with an insight into
daily life as it is lived in Iran. In particular, we witness the ever
looming presence of the Basij "morals police", and the ingenuity that
young Tehranis exercise to circumvent their rules. The Islamic Republic
decrees that unmarried men and women should not socialise together:
in one passage, Sara and Dara meet in a hospital waiting room, where
all those around them are too busy to notice their illegal encounter.
"Just as it is impossible to write a straightforward Iranian love
story, it is impossible to live one," says Mandanipour. "Iranians
no longer have the opportunity to have a romantic life, and that can
destroy love."
No surprise, then, that when Rhode Island’s Brown University offered
Mandanipour a one year fellowship in 2006, he jumped at it. By then,
however, he’d been writing fiction in Iran – and navigating a route
through the censor’s office – for years. Now, he found himself at
liberty to write whatever he chose. The result, for a while, was
creative paralysis:
"In Iran, I’d become used to writing about my sorrows. When I arrived
in the USA, for months I didn’t know what to write. But then I realised
that by telling this story, I could bring the voice of Iranian writers
to the world.
"Luckily, I found an excellent translator. Poor translation is one
of the problems that keeps contemporary Iranian fiction from western
readers."
In that way, then, one of Iran’s most significant literary sons found
himself among the many Iranian writers who live and work outside their
homeland. He became, in short, a diaspora writer. Via a succession
of novels across the last few years, fiction of the Iranian diaspora
has come of age, with writers such as Marjane Satrapi and Porochista
Khakpour introducing western readers to the 1979 revolution, life in
the Islamic Republic, and the Iranian exile communities that now exist
in the USA and Europe. Many of these writers are second-generation
immigrants to the west, the so called "hyphenated" children of
Iranians who fled the country in 1979: Porochista Khakpour – whose
2008 novel Sons and Other Flammable Objects centred around an Iranian
family in New York in the wake of 9/11 – was born in Tehran in 1978,
but raised in Los Angeles; Marjane Satrapi, now 41, left Tehran for
Paris aged just 14.
And this year’s Iranian diaspora fiction star, 32-year-old Laleh
Khadivi, was born in Esfahan but, following the revolution, moved
with her family first to Belgium, then Canada, and finally the
USA. Khadivi’s debut, The Age of Orphans, tells the story of a young
Kurdish boy, Reza, captured from the Kurdish region of Iran by the
armies of Reza Shah in 1920s Iran. Already lauded by critics in the
USA, the novel will be published in the UK in November.
Why, then, is Iranian diaspora fiction – a full 30 years after the
Iranian revolution – at such a high point? Given the difficulties
endured by writers inside Iran, has it fallen to the second-generation
diaspora Iranians – now in their late 20s and early 30s, old enough
to be publishing their debuts – to bring Iranian stories to the world?
"It’s partly that, yes," says Laleh Khadivi. "We have the freedom to
write about the events of the last 30 years. But we’re outsiders, so
these works aren’t being written from an entirely Iranian perspective."
So are these young diaspora writers – some of whom have not seen
Iran since they were children – really in a position to write about
that country?
"Fiction is an imaginative act," says Khadivi. "It is not reportage,
that is a reduced idea of what fiction aims at. But in general, there
certainly are writers at work inside Iran, and they can write from
a very grounded sense of that place; like Faulkner wrote about the
Deep South. On the other hand, I have access to certain experiences –
around exile, immigration, identity – that they might not."
The Age of Orphans is the first instalment in a projected trilogy
that will see Reza’s son leave Iran for the USA, and his grandson
return. It’s a story concerned with identity, exile, and homeland;
a subject derived from Khadivi’s own experience: "We’ve moved from a
tribal, to national, to a post-national identity; my questions are:
what has this done to our souls? What are we leaving behind?"
"Yes, those are questions that have relevance in my life, but I
approach them as an artist. Iranian diaspora fiction is big right
now partly because readers are searching for cultural interpreters
who they think can help them to understand Iran. But that puts the
diaspora writer in a strange position; I think of myself as an artist,
not a cultural interpreter, or an Iran analyst."
Khadivi’s words are echoed by the most established translator of
Iranian fiction into English, Iranian-American Sara Khalili, who
translated Censoring an Iranian Love Story. She says that it would
be wrong to let the success of Iranian diaspora fiction blind us to
the fiction being written inside Iran: "Since the revolution a new
generation of writers inside Iran have taken up their pens," she
says. "But they often lack the means to get their work translated,
so very little reaches a western readership.
"Even when Shahriar began writing this book, we had no agent, no
publisher, and no idea if the translation would see the light of
day. We were successful, but writers inside Iran lack our resources."
So what, then, of Mandanipour? Having intended to be in the USA for
one year, he decided to stay when President Ahmadinejad instituted a
further censorship crackdown, and says he has no plans to return to
Iran. Does he consider himself, now, an Iranian diaspora writer? And
can readers of English expect more of his work?
"I’ve gained a new perspective, and my style of writing is changing;
that’s only natural," he says. "Of course I miss Iran, and I feel
guilty that I have a comfortable life here while my fellow writers
in Iran suffer.
"It’s for that reason, because of my circumstances – and also
because of what I’ve seen – that I feel it is my duty to write. I
volunteered to join the army in the Iran-Iraq war, so I could bear
witness. Whenever there was an earthquake in some town, I was there in
the aftermath. I even survived that assassination attempt, which was
an attempt to silence Iranian literature. I’ve already written much
fiction that deals with these subjects, and I must write much more."