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Here are six stories by one of Iran's greatest contemporary
writers, rare and intimate glimpses into the lives of ordinary
Iranian men and women; windows into the Persian soul. From the
delicately painted tragedy of Mehrangiz in A City Like Paradise to
the wry comedy of Anis, from two sisters' surreal nocturne in
Childbirth to a village boy's broken dreams in Potshards, from a
young woman torn between duty and passion in Bibi Shahrbanu to the
brilliant and numinous Sutra, each story is told with the detail,
clarity of vision, and deeply human compassion characteristic of
Daneshvar's finest work. Daneshvar's Iran is a landscape in which
the medieval and the modern coexist uneasily. Against this
backdrop, the author explores the persistent themes of her nearly
five decades as a writer: themes of sexual and racial identity, the
social relations of wealth and poverty, the workings of memory and
dreams. The lives of her characters-here, some of her most subtly
realized-are determined by conditions and norms over which they
have little or no control; still, in the end, Sutra offers a vision
of hope. These stories are a major addition to Daneshvar's works in
translation, Daneshvar's Playhouse and Savushun.
These stories not only portray, with incomparable perception,
humour, and compassion, women from the various strata of Iranian
society, but they also capture the essence of a rich traditional
culture undergoing change. A nanny lets go of a little girl's hand
in Shiraz's exotic and crowded Vakil Bazaar, and goes off to flirt
with the nutseller -- the child is lost. In The Accident, the
author portrays, in hilarious parody, a young woman who forsakes
husband, children, and home just to own a car. The Playhouse is a
traditional Persian theatre where the play and the players act on
many levels both real and fantastic. The Traitor's Intrigue lets
you into the life of a middle-class couple and brilliantly shows
how a colonel's allegiance passed from Shah to Khomeini. To Whom
Can I Say Hello? tells of an old woman's memories, her life, love,
tragic outcome, and eventual hope. Loss of Jalal is a moving
chronicle of the final days of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, one of Iran's
great writers and the author's husband. Simin Daneshvar draws from
over a thousand years of Persian storytelling tradition and
combines this with modern techniques of short fiction and cinema.
The result is both entertaining and a key of uncompromising
honesty, rich detail, and a dazzling range of voices that guides
the reader into the centre of a complex society and its concerns.
Twenty-six-year-old college graduate, artist, and employee of the
Ministry of Art and Culture, Hasti Nourian aspires to be a "new
woman"-independent-minded, strong-willed, and in control of her own
destiny. A destiny that includes Morad, an idealistic young
architect and artist with whom Hasti is deeply in love. Morad is a
sharp critic of Iran's Westernized bourgeois class, the one that
Hasti's mother relishes. After Hasti's father died, her mother
married a wealthy businessman and moved to an exclusive
neighborhood of northern Tehran. Socializing with a mixed group of
Americans, English-speaking Iranians, and British expats, her
mother's life revolves around gym visits, hairdressers, and party
planning. When her mother persuades Hasti to join her at the spa,
she introduces her to Salim, an eligible young man from a wealthy
family whose British education and proper comportment, as well as
his economic status make him an ideal suitor for Hasti in her
mother's eyes. Against her better judgment, Hasti finds herself
attracted to Salim and tempted by her mother's comfortable
lifestyle. As the novel unfolds, Hasti is torn between her first
love and the radical politics of her university friends, and love
for her mother and the freedom economic security can bring. Set in
Tehran in the mid-1970s, just a few years before the 1977-79
revolution, Daneshvar's unforgettable novel depicts the tumultuous
social, cultural, and economic changes of the day through the
intimate story of a young woman's struggle to find her identity.
a? ? A very engaging saga...a? ? a? ? Washington Post Book World a?
? A powerfully resonant work...a? ? a? ? Publishers Weekly a? ?
Outstanding foreign fiction...a? ? a? ? USA Today Savushun
(pronounced a? ? sa-voo-shoona? ? ) is a folk tradition, surviving
in Southern Iran from an undateable pre-islamic past, that conjures
hope in spite of everything. The novel chronicles the life of a
Persian family during the World War II Allied occupation of Iran.
It is set in Shiraz, a town which evokes images of Persepolis and
pre-islamic monuments, the great Persian poets, the shrines, sufis
and nomadic tribes all within a historical web of the interests,
privilege and influence of foreign powers, corruption, incompetence
and arrogance of persons in authority. The story is seen through
the eyes of Zari, a young wife, and mother, who copes with her
idealistic husband while struggling with her desire for traditional
family life and her need for an individual identity. simin
daneshvar lives and continues to write in Iran.
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