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| Stories from Iran | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| A Chicago Anthology | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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This collection of thirty-five Persian short stories by twenty-six of
Iran's best known contemporary writers gives voice to the concerns, strivings,
and visions of their generation. In styles ranging from the dark to the
humorous, from the elegant to the poetic, these stories depict aspects
of both traditional and modern life in Iran with its many religious, political,
cultural and class tensions. The expanding role of women in Iranian society
is attested to both by the large number of women writers included in the
volume, and by the central role played by women in many of the stories.
Written during the last 75 years and arranged in chronological order,
these stories span a period in Iranian history from the Constitutional
Revolution (1906-11) through the long reign of the Pahlavis (1925-79),
the upheavals of the 1950s, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, to the present.
Stories From Iran was selected, edited, and translated by scholars of
Persian Literature at the University of Chicago. Accompanied by a complete
glossary, author biographies and photos, it will give the reader an unmatched
insight into Iranian life--an insight that only true works of art can
provide.
Preface
"The Persian Short Story:
An Overview" by Heshmat Moayyad
Stories
"What's Sauce for the Goose . . ." by M. A. Jamalzadeh
"Abji Khanom" by Sadeq Hedayat
"Mirza" by Bozorg Alavi
"The Snake Stone" by Beh'azin
"The Wooden Horse" by Sadeq Chubak
"The Gravediggers" by Sadeq Chubak
"The Half-Closed Eye" by Simin Daneshvar
"Esmat's Journey" by Ebrahim Golestan
"The American Husband" by Jalal al-e Ahmad
"The Little Native Boy" by Ahmad Mahmud
"Through the Veil of Fog" by Jamal Mir-Sadeqi
"Glorious Day" by Jamal Mir-Sadeqi
"Moths in the Night" by Gholam Hosayn Nazari
"The Cast" by Gholam Hosayn Nazari
"Adolescence and the Hill" by Gholam Hosayn Nazari
"Mr. Hemayat" by Gholam Hosayn Nazari
"Shadowy" by Gholam Hosayn Nazari
"Love" by Esma'il Fasih
"The Two Brothers" by Gholam Hosayn Sa'edi
"Mourners of Bayal" by Gholam Hosayn Sa'edi
"Sacred Keepsake" by Nader Ebrahimi
"The Trench and the Empty Canteens" by Bahram Sadeqi
"The Wolf" by Hushang Golshiri
"Portrait of an Innocent" by Hushang Golshiri
"The Discreet & Obvious Charms of the Petite Bourgeoisie"
by Fereydun Tonokaboni
"Aziz Aqa's Gold Filling" by Goli Taraqqi
"Brother's Future Family" by Mahshid Amir-Shahi
"The Smell of Lemon Peel, the Smell of Fresh Milk" by Mahshid
Amir-Shahi
"Hard Luck" by Mahmud Dowlatabadi
"Night Journey" by Nasim Khaksar
"The Sad Brothers" by Amin Faqiri
"Trail Offers" by Shahrnush Parsipur
"The Long Night" by Moniru Ravanipur
"Narcissus, Get Your Nice Narcissus" by Hushang Ashurzadeh
"The Mirror" by Farahnaz Abbasi
Glossary & Bibliography
Capsule Reviews
Los Angeles Times: "The first and most comprehensive body
of short fiction in translation, Stories From Iran samples the works of
some of the greatest Iranian authors of this century, as well as those
by lesser known writers with few published stories to their name. . .
. The translation and publication of these works does a rare and valuable
service to the literature of the East and West alike."
Kirkus Reviews: "This anthology is not only a timely introduction
to an unfamiliar literature but offers as well illuminating insights into
a society where the postmodern and pre-Renaissance still uneasily coexist.
. . . Rich in imagery and symbols."
Publishers Weekly: "[the stories] stand out for their originality
and well-modulated feeling."
Middle East Journal: "The writings examine the most common
social, political, economic, and cultural concerns of Iranians. Readers
will find modern Iranian writers for the most part conscious and critical
of their society and committed to ameliorating its conditions. . . . The
translations are smooth and quite readable."
World Literature Today: "The selection, editing, and translation
[of the stories] were undertaken by scholars of Persian literature at
the University of Chicago. Their work will clearly benefit other scholars
in the field and contribute to a better understanding of the Persian short
story among nonspecialists."
Full Reviews:Los Angeles Times (July 19, 1992)
"Persian prose and Persian women have one bitter experience in common,"
writes Heshmat Moayyad, the editor of this anthology of Iranian short
stories "they have both been suppressed for many centuries, women
by men, prose by poetry." Moayyad has set himself the very ambitious
and muchneeded task of setting right this wrong.
The first and most comprehensive body of short fiction in translation,
"Stories From Tran" samples the works of some of the greatest
Iranian authors of this century, as well as those by lesserknown writers
with few published stories to their name. Presented in chronological order,
the stories have been translated by the scholars of Persian literature
at the University of Chicago. Some of the translations are superb, while
others have obviously wounded their subject, but as a whole, the stories
provide a comprehensive overview of a little known genre of Persian writing.
An indepth essay gives the novice reader an introductory background on
Iranian prose, while brief author biographies and some dramatic blackandwhite
portraits introduce the author and his career at the beginning of each
story. The editor has also made a conscious effort on behalf of women:
They have been given fair representation, both as authors and as characters.
In "The Long Night," an Iranian village lies awake, terrorized,
as it listens to the sounds of a young girl's screaming. Trying to escape
the sound, the villagers close their doors and their shutters, and command
their children to sleep. But for a whole week the screaming has noy stopped,
and now the children are begging their mothers to help their friend.
There has been a wedding. Golpar, the child bride of the story, has been
given away by her mother to a much older man, her own Uncle Ebrahim, in
return for a few bracelets, a head scarf and two pairs of shoes: one for
Golpar, "and a pair for ma too, so her feet don't get blisters."
Golpar is so much smaller than her husband she barely reaches his waist
when they are both standing. She understands nothing of matrimony, only
that she can't play with the other girls any more, and that if she waits
long enough, Uncle Ebrahim will "make me a doll . . . a talking doll."
Now she moans and screams under the caresses of her uncle: "Please
. . . please, don't . . . you're killing me . . . killing me . . ."
Moniru Ravanipur, the author of this poignant and well crafted tale, is
a young addition to the cast of Iranian writers of short fiction. Her
career dates back only to the post-Pahlavi era, but the realities and
concerns of her tale-the backwardness of village life, the overriding
poverty of peasants, strict and unmerciful social norms, stifling traditions
so ever-present and established that no one dares challenge them-are recurrent
in the works of earlier and better known authors.
In Sadeq Chubak's "The Gravediggers," Khadijeh, a young village
girl pregnant out of wedlock, is chased by cruel children and cursed by
vicious adults, so terrorized and helpless that she runs to the forest
after giving birth and buries the newborn in the mud.
In Sadeq Hedayat's "Abji Khanom," a young woman ls humiliated
and ridiculed by her own mother for the sin of having been born ugly.
Convinced that no one will ever marry her, she has devoted her life to
prayer and mourning and agonizes in jealousy over her younger sister,
Mahrokh (literally, beautiful as the moon), and resorts to everything
from cruel remarks to slander against her in order to quench her own jealousy.
The night of Mahrokh's wedding, Abdi Khanom is absent, having chosen instead
to attend a ceremonial wake. Later she comes home, ignoring her mother's
reprimands, and takes her revenge: She commits suicide by throwing herself
into the water reservoir.
What is striking in all of these titles is the characters' perceived impotence
in the face of life's tyrannies, and their internalization of the evil
that pervades their lives; instead of rejecting the darkness and pulling
together in hardship, the characters divide-mother against child, lover
against lover, society against the individual. This is as true of stories
that date back to the beginning of the century as it is of ones written
in the 1980s; through war and occupation, revolution and coup d'etat even
Khomeini's return to God, the fate of the Iranian people has changed but
little, and so, we are to presume from these stories, has their response
to their plight.
Nowhere is this point more evident as in the work of Simin Daneshvar.
Iran's greatest contemorary demale novelist, whose prose has been characterized
by a passionate love and concern for the plight of the common people.
Saneshvar's best-selling classic, "savushun," was the first
novel ever published by an Iranian woman, and translations exist in English.
In "The Half-Closed Eye," she writes of two workingclass women--an
older aunt and her younger niece--rendered petty and small by their poverty,
who devote themselves almost obsessively to the task of slandering the
other. Ashamed of their status in life, they try to relieve their own
sense of inferiority by belittling the other.
Daneshvar's prose is all the more effective because it is devoid of the
political affiliations that slant the works of some of Iran's greatest
writers. These others--Bozorg Alavi, Beh'azin, Ahmad Mahmud Jalal Ale
Ahmad, Fereydun Tonokaboni, Shahrnush Parsipur--were deeply involved in
politics, most of them leaning to the Left and have suffered imprisonment
and persecution under one regime or another. Their courage and devotion
aside, their stories are transparent attempts to make political statements,
and as such are devoid of the magic and the charm which their medium can
possess: Bozorg Alavi's "Mirza" speaks to the dehumanization
of the individual that results from persecution and exile. Fereydun Tonokaboni's
"The Obvious Charms of the Bourgeoisie" condemns the lifestyle
and the corruption of Iran's Western leaning uppermiddle class in the
1970s. Jalal Ale Ahmad's "The American Husband" is a naked statement
about the ravages of the West upon the character and the life of the East.
Taken as a whole, the anthology serves as a witness to Iran's recent social
and political history, her many battles with herself, and the peace that
has always eluded her. It also leaves the reader with a dual impression
of Persian storytelling: either sad and impotent, or rebellious and preaching.
One could debate whether this is a complete and fair presentation, but
from a country where leaders rarely have tolerated their own literary
figures, the translation and publication of these works many of which
have at various times been banned inside Iran, does a rare and valuable
service to the literature of the East and West alike.
Middle East Journal (Vol. 47, No. 2, Spring 1993)
Although now the dominant vehicle of literary expression in Iran, and perhaps a more readily accessible means of intercultural communication with Western audiences, modern Persianlanguage fiction still remains relatively unknown in the English speaking world. In recent years a number of Persian language novels have been translated and published in English, but short story collections are still scarce. For this reason, the present volume is a timely response to a most urgent need for students of Persian, Middle Eastern, and world literatures and cultures.
Stories from Iran includes 35 stories by 26 authors along with an introductory essay by the editor and a glossary of Persian terms and names. Heshmat Moayyad's introduction adequately prepares readers unfamiliar with the history of modern Iranian fiction for a smorgasbord of short stories that includes the work of such veteran writers as M.A. Jamalzadeh and more recent authors such as Hushang Ashurzadeh, as well as writers as diverse in style and approach as Hushang Golshiri and Mahshid Amir Shahi. The selections by and large are representative of the majority of the writers whose works have appeared in anthologies and the totality of 20th century Persian language fiction. The writings examine the most common social, political, economic, and cultural concerns of Iranians.
Although the volume spans seven decades of short story writing-from 1921, the year of Reza Shah's coup, to 1991, and the period since the Islamic revolution-readers will find that many issues addressed by earlier writers do not differ significantly from those found in more recent Iranian fiction. Nevertheless, the relatively large number of stories from numerous writers and the variety of the selections provide a good overview of the history and development of the short story in Iran.
On the whole, the selections represent well the various historical, thematic, and stylistic trends of the totality of modern Iranian short stories. Sadeq Hedayat's "Abji Khanom," Beh'azin's "The Snake Stone," Sadeq Chubak's "The Gravediggers," Ebrahim Golestan's "Esmat's Journey," Ahmad Mahmud's "The Little Native Boy," and Gholam Hosayn Sa'edi's segment from "Mourners of Bayal" portray characters from the lower classes and examine such social themes as poverty and religious superstition. Other works, including Bozorg Alavi's "Mirza," Simin Daneshvar's "The Half Closed Eye," Jamal MirSadeqi's "Through the Veil of Fog," Bahram Sadeqi's "The Trench and the Empty Canteens," and Mahshid AmirShahi's "Brother's Future Family," focus on upperclass Iranians and intellectual characters who reflect the social and psychological dilemmas of the individual in a society in transition.
Readers of this anthology will find modern Iranian writers for the most part conscious and critical of their society and committed to ameliorating its conditions. The chronological order of the stories also shows increasing technical sophistication in the art of Persian language fiction. In the course of the seven decades spanned by this anthology, Persian short story writing has advanced from the simple anecdotal tales of Jamalzadeh to the technically and symbolically complex works of Golshiri and Moniru Ravanipur.
With the exception of a few literal translations that could be somewhat puzzling or odd to English speaking readers (for example, p. 54, "room of five doors"), the translations are smooth and quite readable. As the first comprehensive collection of Persian language short stories, Stories from Iran should find its place not only on the lists of university textbooks and on academic library shelves, but, one hopes, in the homes of a more general audience as well.
World Literature Today (Winter 1993)
The short story is a relatively new genre in the history of Persian literature. Its beginnings are usually traced to 1921, the year in which Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh published Yeki bud yeki nabud (Once Upon a Time), a collection of six of his short stories. Interestingly, this rather momentous literary event took place outside Iran. It was in Berlin that Jamalzadeh's collection first appeared, thus becoming symbolic of the exogenous origins and evolution of the Persian short story.
Heshmat Moayyad's collection of thirty-five stories attempts to capture a view of the path along which the short story has developed in modern Persian literature. To this end it is arranged in chronological order, beginning with Jamalzadeh's "What's Sauce for the Goose" and ending with a piece by Farahnaz Abbasi written in 1988. Each story is preceded by a biographical sketch aimed at readers who would otherwise lack access to general information about the writers. For the reader uninitiated in the Persian language and literary tradition, a glossary and bibliography are also appended.
The temporal organization of the collection, though particularly advantageous for the purposes of instruction, does not necessarily constitute a parallel overview of the systematic development of the genre. Not all the writers included in the volume have carried out stylistic and structural experiments of the kind that can be seen as having changed the esthetic norms of the Persian short story. In fact, as Moayyad himself points out in the introduction, the modern Iranian writer's preoccupation with ideological matters has sometimes overshadowed aesthetic concerns. Of the group of writers who have made political commitment the main focus of their art, Moayyad states: "With them the meaning of their craft became identical with their political stance, a trend that can hardly be rated positively." To present readers with a more balanced view of the short story in Persian, the editor has also selected works "that dilute this purported seriousness with a dose of healthy humor."
The most demanding aspect of producing such an anthology is to create an even tone and style for the work of nineteen different translators. It is to mark their successful collaboration and coordination that the collection is subtitled "A Chicago Anthology." The selection, editing, and translation were undertaken by scholars of Persian literature at the University of Chicago. Their work will clearly benefit other scholars in the field and contribute to a better understanding of the Persian short story among nonspecialists.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
If it is true that the literature of a country is the key to the recognition of its people then the study of modern Persian literature should be an indispensable preliminary to the understanding of the social, political, and cultural situation in Iran. This is particularly true in Iran, where as M. R. Ghanoonparvar's Prophets of doom (1984) clearly shows, writers have long been held in respect as the visionaries and prophets of modern times. The personal involvement of many of them in social issues has also resulted in the production of an impressive amount of 'committed literature'. While classical Iranian literature has a wealthy heritage of imaginative writings, mainly in the forms of belletristic letters enjoying court patronage, Iyric and epic poetry, and Islamic and Sufi literature, it is no more than a century since modern novels and short stories became acceptable genres and the dominant forms in Persian literature. Their development is strikingly in accord with the often turbulent social and political events of this century.
The apparently sudden emergence of the modern short story coincides with the publication of sociological novels like Tehrani Makhfif (Tehran the Terrible), by Mushfiq Kazeml in the early 1920s. For the short story the first landmark is Muhammad 'Ali Jamalzadeh's (b. 1892) collection of six stories entitled ' Yekz bfid Yekl nabfid ' (Once upon a time), published in Berlin in 1921. Its author, like many other contemporary figures responsible for applying modern European literary forms to Persian themes, was educated abroad and was living in Europe at the time of publication. In the preface to his collection, Jamalzadeh observed that Iran, despite its proud literary history, had fallen behind other literary societies and was still blindly following the ancient belief that literature is produced for the elite. He goes on to say that the success of European literature was owed to the realization that modern literature must use the language spoken by the people and that fiction must be accepted as a literary genre. Jamalzadeh was none the less aware of the conflict to come between his beliefs and the threatened classical tradition. It was some time before the clash of opposing principles and the voices of zealous critics began to die down. Even a writer like Jamalzadeh, himself in the vanguard of the modern movement, felt compelled to excuse his modernism by saying that he wrote these stones as recreation, to relax after the pursuit of more weighty and serious work.
The works of fiction translated in the book under review are certainly no mere recreational exercises. The choice of 35 short stories by some 22 writers offers examples from over seven decades and illustrates a wide spectrum of modern Persian writing. These stories throw light on the uneasy coexistence between the main currents of radicalism and modernism and the traditional and conservative beliefs of Iranian society. Although contemporary Iranian writers, like their forerunners in the early twentieth century, are primarily commentators on the social scene, their portrayal of the experience of individuals and the collective experience of society is, in comparison, far more tangible and realistic. The writers of the earlier period were often absent from the society they portrayed and their narratives contained accents of superiority and moralizing. Overembellished prose, unfamiliar syntax, obscurity of reference, and images hard to conjure with may also be cited among the shortcomings of writings of the turn of the century. By contrast, contemporary writers have acquired the ability to place themselves in something approximating to the position of their readers.
A dominant feature of many of the writers in this collection is the desire to alter the social and moral preoccupations of their society, to present the dissatisfaction with social conditions that ranges from the inadequacy of the welfare system and the oppression of rural and urban lower classes to the shackles of dogmatic and superstitious beliefs that can threaten the fabric of society.
In most twentieth-century Iranian fictional writing, there is a continuing conflict between modern secular voices and conservative and religious values. Thus ' Through the veil of fog', by Jamal MirSadeqi, the tenth story in this collection, presents the dilemmas of a traditional Iranian girl in London who is confused by her seemingly promiscuous surroundings and unable to transcend the cultural and moral differences between the two societies. Similarly in the story 'The American husband' by Jalal Ali Ahmad, the gulf between what is acceptable in one society and frowned upon in the other is cleverly laid out. Fereydun Tonokabonis' The discreet and obvious charms of the petite bourgeoisie' is an accurate portrayal of a society with a very strong sense of the importance of material wealth and rewards over spiritual values. It describes the dilemmas of a social group who have, in the words of one of the characters in this story, a Mr. Teacher, 'substituted the means for their ends'. Money, homes, cars, holidays and lusting after each other's spouses apparently give the characters of the story very little pleasure and have all been purchased at the high cost of the ideals and goals of their youth.
Heroic and innocent romantic spirits that triumph over the prejudices and barriers which separate two cultures are present in the story of ' The little native boy ', by Ahmad Mahmud, while ' Abji Khanom ' by Sadeq Hedayat, ' The two brothers', by Gholam Hosayn Saiedl, and ' The gravediggers ', by Sadeq Chubak are stories of the macabre, and the brutal, darker side of life. The lighthearted tale of ' Brother's future family', by Mahshld AmirShahl, is the all too familiar tale of a young girl's faux pas that nearly ruins the prospect of a betrothal.
The influences of Western ways of life and the effects of the speed of modernization on aspects of Iranian culture, a concern with threats to the Iranian identity, political nationalism, and the eradication of social ills by education, liberty and prosperity, are constant themes running through many of the stories in this anthology.
Faced with the task of producing translations of material written in a language which relies heavily on idioms, and proverbs which are often written in verse, Moayyad's team of translators has managed successfully to ease the reader into each story, and whenever possible English equivalents of idioms and popular slang are used. The translations are meticulous and faithfully close to the original. Among the translators, John R. Perry, Judith Wilks, Farzm Yazdanfar, and Heshmat Moayyad, the editor, seem to have succeeded best in conveying the pace and tone of their stories without making them sound lifeless and vague. Among the authors, younger talents like Hushang Ashurzadeh, Farahnaz 'Abbasi and Amin Faqiri appear alongside better established and more widely studied writers such as Sadeq Hedayat, Jamalzadeh, Nader Ebrahimi, Ahmad Mahmud, Ebrahim Golestan and Jalal Ali Ahmad. Increasingly, the protagonists of modern Persian fiction are women, depicted in far from docile roles, and it is good to see this reflected in the inclusion in this anthology of works by some of the finest contemporary Iranian female writers such as Simin Daneshvar and Goli Tarraqi.
Some of the stories are here translated into English for the first time, while others, already published elsewhere in translation, like Ebrahim Golestan's 'Esmat's journey' or Jamalzadeh's 'What's sauce for the goose...', make a welldeserved reappearance in this anthology.
Whenever possible each story is prefaced with a photograph and a short biographical account of the author's life and works. The glossary provided is also very useful. Heshmat Moayyad and Persian scholars of the University of Chicago should be encouraged in their endeavors in the hope that they may acquaint the English reader with further selections of Persian stories, and even novels, and in so doing provide an indispensable aid to an understanding of the social, political, and cultural situation in Iran.
Kirkus Reviews (December 15, 1991)
With an essay by editor Moayyad (Persian Literature/Univ. of Chicago), this anthology is not only a timely introduction to an unfamiliar literature but offers as well illuminating insights into a society where the postmodern and preRenaissance still uneasily coexist.
Ranging in quality from the excellent to the competent, the stories similarly vary in form between the conventional and the experimental. Conventional stories like "Abji Khanom," "Love," and "The Long Night," in which young girls, more children than women, are married off by their families to monsters of sexual depravity whose excesses kill their childbrides on their wedding nights, reflect an older society, dominated by tradition and superstition. "Trial Offers," a Kafkaesque story of B., who is turning into a butterfly to "serve as an obvious example of an age that elegizes the obvious," and the deliberately fragmentary "The Trench and the Empty Canteen," in which three anonymous lives intersect to reveal "the grief and sorrow of thinking in loneliness, sleeping in loneliness, and screaming in loneliness," are examples of more experimental fiction. Perhaps two of the most polished pieces are "The Halfclosed Eye," a perceptive tale of protective family delusions by Simin Daneshvar, whose work has been published in the US; and "Mirza," which is as much an affecting love story as a telling account of Iranian political dissent.
Rich in imagery and symbols, stories that despite some uneven writing-do much to explain a country whose recent history has so devastatingly impinged on our own.
Bookwatch (June 1995)
Stories From Iran is a collection of 35 Persian short stories by 26 of Iran's best-known contemporary writers. Stories From Iran covers the 70-year history of the short-story in Persian literature. These stories are translated by Persian scholars ar the University of Chicago under the editorship of Heshmat Moayyas, Professor of Persian Literature. Stories From Iran includes a glossary, author biographies, and photos of many authors, including Bozorg Alavi, Shahrnuch Parsipur, Hushang Golshiri, and Moniru Ravanipur.
Publishers Weekly (January 6, 1992)
The first sentence of the first of the 35 translated stories collected here contains an anti-Semitic slur, and this is inauspicious beginning is indicative of Moayyad's uncritical editing. A professor of Persian literature at the University of Chicago, he overstates the strength of the authors he presents, most of whom are interesting for the view they afford of an evolving Iran rather than for their literary techniques. The first Persian short stories, according to Moayyad, were written in 1921 in Berlin; the grafting of traditions to produce social critiques sparked controversy in Iran but may seem heavy-handed or even clichéd to contemporary American readers. Often, predictable or melodramatic endings mar otherwise intriguing works. On the other hand, four densely imaginative sketches by Gholam-Hosayn Nazari (b. 1933) and a portrait of a young woman uneasily embracing modernity, by Shahrnush Parsipur (b. 1947), stand out for their originality and well-modulated feeling.
Heshmat Moayyad has been a professor of Persian Literature at the University of Chicago since 1966. He studied at the University of Tehran and received his doctorate in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Frankfurt. He has also taught at Harvard University, the Univeristy of Naples and the University of Frankfurt. Professor Moayyad has written, translated, and edited several books in English, German, and Persian.
©Copyright Mage Publishers 1994-2003
