About New Novels in Iran

A new genre of novel has been forming in the last two decades in Iran. For people who have read most of their novels before the revolution, names like Mahmud dolat-AbAdi and Hooshang Golshiri may be household names, when thinking of novels, but these are not the authors that have been mostly read in Iran in the last two decades. Names like fattAneh hAj-Seyed javAdi (author of bAmdAd-e khomAr and other works), Nahid A. Pejvak (author of shabe sarAb and other works), Nasrin Ghadiri (author of rahAyam kon and other works) are names of author that people read. The days when people read jAlAl-e Al-e Ahmad are long passed.

A while back in an article about surrogate mothers, I mentioned some of these authors and the trends:

http://www.ghandchi.com/125-Surrogate.htm

I hope to find some time to write my impressions of the common themes of these new works, for example it is interesting to note the picture they all have of the West. It definitely is not the reactionary picture that jalAl-e Al-e Ahmad depicted in his Gharbzadegi or another reactionary picture of the West that the likes of Ali Shariati made for us. Nonetheless, it is not what those of us who have really lived in the West, think of life in the West. Almost all of them miss the work_centric reality of the West and see it more as a place where people are just having fun, as if it is a soap opera depicted on a morning TV program. Another interesting thing is their look at the old days of Iran or the life in a village, where contrary to the likes of dolat-AbAdi or Al-e Ahmad, the characters in these new works have no desire of wishing to revive the antiquated and they admire the modern. Many of these works are very interesting and show the aspirations of Iranian people in this period of our history and especially they have a lot of focus on individual interests and what an individual wants. I hope to find the time to write more about it but till then;-), here are the URLs for a few of these books that I noted and I recommend reading them:

shabe sarAb by Nahid A. Pejvak

bAmdAd-e khomAr by fattAneh hAj-Seyed javAdi

rahAyam kon by Nasrin Ghadiri

Sam Ghandchi, Publisher

IRANSCOPE

http://www.iranscope.com

April 3, 2002

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