Download or read book The Persian Novel written by Omid Azadibougar and published by Brill Rodopi. This book was released on 2014 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the world's greatest novels have been translated into Persian. Though Iranian novelists are almost completely unknown in the outside world. It is still classical literature that represents Iran. What delays the globalization of Persian novels? As a response, the present study deals with questions about the novel in the Persian literary system, the literary discourse in the Iranian cultural context and modern Persian literature on the global scene.
Download or read book Shahnameh written by Firdawsī and published by Penguin Classics. This book was released on 2007 with total page 930 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan in the 10th century, Shahnameh is one of the most important pieces of Persian literature. This prodigious narrative tells the story of pre-Islamic Iran, beginning in the mythic time of Creation and continuing forward to the Arab invasion in the seventh century. The sweep and psychological depth of the Shahnameh is nothing less than magnificent. Now one of the greast translators of Persian poetry, Dick Davis, presents Ferdowsi's masterpiece in an elegant combination of prose and verse.
Download or read book Stories from Persia written by Sadegh Hedayat and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-20 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Persia (today Iran) is an age-old territory with an ancient culture. Ferdowsi (940-1020AD), the Persian poet who narrates the history of Iran in his masterwork Shahnameh begins with the story of Keumars, who he proclaims to be the first man. According to Shahnameh, Keumars's grandson Hushang discovered fire and founded the Persian festival of Sadeh in its honor. Indeed, Ferdowsi relates the history of mankind in a manner unbeknown to the western public. After poets such as Ferdowsi, Saadi and Khayyam, Persian literature never stopped to thrive and has known no stagnation ever since. It has continued to evolve through centuries of prosper and refinement. Stories from Persia is written by several prominent contemporary Iranian authors, including Sadegh Hedayat (known best in the West for his famous novel The Blind Owl) and Sadegh Chubak. The original title of the book in Persian is The Sea of Gems (1959) edited by Dr. Mehdi Hamidi Shirazi (1914-1986). The 24 stories are diverse and entertaining. They cover a variety of different genres such as women's fiction, historical fiction, animal fables, magical realism, and romance. They illuminate many murky corners of the Iranian culture.
Download or read book A Persian Requiem written by Sīmīn Dānishvar and published by Halban Publishers. This book was released on 2002 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the southern Persian town of Shiraz in the last years of World War II with the British army in occupation, the novel chronicles the life of Zari, a traditional, anxious, and superstitious woman whose husband, Yusef is an idealistic feudal landlord. A web of political intrigue and hostility is created. In the background, tribal leaders are in open rebellion against the government and British occupation. In the midst of this turbulence Zari carries on normal life within the beautiful courtyard of her house, attempting to keep the family safe from external events. The corruption engendered by occupation is pervasive as Zari's family life is shattered and disaster strikes. An immensely moving story, the novel is a powerful indictment of colonization."
Download or read book The Rise of the Persian Novel written by Claus V. Pedersen and published by Harrassowitz. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The earliest Persian novels from the period 1910-1925 are examined using literary analyses and historical contextualization. This approach presents the novels - historical and social realist novels and a Utopia - in a completely new light and invites the reader to a new interpretation of the earliest period of modern Persian literature. Claus V. Pedersen is associate professor of Persian studies, University of Copenhagen, and specializes in modern Persian literature.
Download or read book Persian Girls written by Nahid Rachlin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-12-27 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many years, heartache prevented Nahid Rachlin from turning her sharp novelist's eye inward: to tell the story of how her own life diverged from that of her closest confidante and beloved sister, Pari. Growing up in Iran, both refused to accept traditional Muslim mores, and dreamed of careers in literature and on the stage. Their lives changed abruptly when Pari was coerced by their father into marrying a wealthy and cruel suitor. Nahid narrowly avoided a similar fate, and instead negotiated with him to pursue her studies in America. When Nahid received the unsettling and mysterious news that Pari had died after falling down a flight of stairs, she traveled back to Iran--now under the Islamic regime--to find out what happened to her truest friend, confront her past, and evaluate what the future holds for the heartbroken in a tale of crushing sorrow, sisterhood, and ultimately, hope.
Download or read book Savushun written by Sīmīn Dānishvar and published by Washington, D.C. : Mage Publishers. This book was released on 1990 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A very engaging saga...'Washington Post Book World?A powerfully resonant work...'Publishers Weekly?Outstanding foreign fiction...'USA TodaySavushun (pronounced ?sa-voo-shoon?) 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.
Download or read book The Colonel written by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2013 Jan Michalski Prize Longlististed for the Man Asian Literary Prize A new novel by the master of Iranian letters that directly engages politics in Iran today Ten years in the writing, this fearless novel—so powerful it’s banned in Iran—tells the stirring story of a tortured people forced to live under successive oppressive regimes. It begins on a pitch black, rainy night, when there’s a knock on the Colonel’s door. Two policemen have come to summon him to collect the tortured body of his youngest daughter. The Islamic Revolution is devouring its own children. Set over the course of a single night, the novel follows the Colonel as he pays a bribe to recover his daughter’s body and then races to bury her before sunrise. As we watch him struggle with the death of his innocent child, we find him wracked with guilt and anger over the condition of his country, particularly as represented by his own children: a son who fell during the 1979 revolution; another driven to madness after being tortured during the Shah’s regime; a third who went off to martyr himself fighting for the ayatollahs in their war against Iraq; one murdered daughter, and another who survives by being married to a cruel opportunist. An incredibly powerful novel about nation, history and family, The Colonel is a startling illumination of the consequences of years of oppression and political upheaval in Iran.
Download or read book Modern Persian Prose Literature written by Hassan Kamshad and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1966 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1966 book provides a series of concise, accessible essays reflecting on the development of Persian fiction during the modern period. The structure of the text is broadly chronological, with chapters allocated to key authors, literary movements, and social changes. This is a valuable volume for anyone interested in Persian literature.
Download or read book A Persian Requiem written by Simin Daneshvar and published by Halban Publishers. This book was released on 2012-06-04 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tribal leaders in opposition to the government, the corruption of occupation, society torn apart by shifting political loyalties... this is the background to one woman's powerful story. A Persian Requiem is a powerful and evocative novel. Set in the southern Persian town of Shiraz in the last years of World War II, when the British army occupied the south of Persia, the novel chronicles the life of Zari, a traditional, anxious and superstitious woman whose husband, sef, is an idealistic feudal landlord. The occupying army upsets the balance of traditional life and throws the local people into conflict. sef is anxious to protect those who depend upon him and will stop at nothing to do so. His brother, on the other hand, thinks nothing of exploiting his kinsmen to further his own political ambitions. Thus a web of political intrigue and hostilities is created, which slowly destroys families. In the background, tribal leaders are in open rebellion against the government, and a picture of a society torn apart by unrest emerges. In the midst of this turbulence, normal life carries on in the beautiful courtyard of Zari's house, in the rituals she imposes upon herself and in her attempt to keep the family safe from external events. But the corruption engendered by occupation is pervasive - some try to profit as much as possible from it, others look towards communism for hope, whilst yet others resort to opium. Finally even Zari's attempts to maintain normal family life are shattered as disaster strikes. An immensely moving story, A Persian Requiem is also a powerful indictment of the corrupting effects of colonization. A Persian Requiem (first published in 1969 in Iran under the title Savushun), was the first novel written by an Iranian woman and, sixteen reprints and half a million copies later, it remains the most widely read Persian novel. In Iran it has helped shape the ideas and attitudes of a generation in its revelation of the factors that contributed to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Simin Daneshvar's A Persian Requiem ... goes a long way towards deepening our understanding of Islam and the events leading up to the 1979 Revolution ... The central characters adroitly reflect different Persian attitudes of the time, attitudes that were eventually to harden into support for either the Ayatollah and his Islamic fundamentalism or, alternatively, for the corrupting Westernisation of the Shah. The value of the book lies in its ability to present these emergent struggles in human terms, in the day-to-day realities of small-town life ... Complex and delicately crafted, this subtle and ironic book unites reader and writer in the knowledge that human weakness, fanaticism, love and terror are not confined to any one creed. The Financial Times A Persian Requiem is not just a great Iranian novel, but a world classic. The Independent on Sunday ... it would be no exaggeration to say that all of Iranian life is there. Spare Rib For an English reader, there is almost an embarrassment of new settings, themes and ideas ... Under the guise of something resembling a family saga - although the period covered is only a few months - A Persian Requiem teaches many lessons about a society little understood in the West. Rachel Billington, The Tablet This very human novel avoids ideological cant while revealing complex political insights, particularly in light of the 1979 Iranian revolution. Publishers Weekly A Persian Requiem, originally published [in Iran] in 1969, was a first novel by Iran's first woman novelist. It has seen sixteen reprints, sold over half a million copies, and achieved the status of a classic, literally shaping the ideas of a generation. Yet when asked about the specific appeal of the novel, most readers are at a loss to pinpoint a single, or even prominent aspect to account for this phenomenal success. Is it the uniquely feminine perspective, allowing the read
Download or read book Censoring an Iranian Love Story written by Shahriar Mandanipour and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • “One of Iran's most important living fiction writers” (The Guardian) shows what it’s like to live and love there today. "A haunting portrait of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran." —The New York Times In a country where mere proximity between a man and a woman may be the prologue to deadly sin, where illicit passion is punished by imprisonment, or even death, telling that most redemptive of human narratives becomes the greatest literary challenge. If conducting a love affair in modern Iran is not a simple undertaking, then telling the story of that love may be even more difficult. Shahriar Mandanipour (author of Moon Brow) evokes a pair of young lovers who find each other—despite surreal persecution and repressive parents—through coded messages and internet chat rooms; and triumphantly their story entwines with an account of their creator’s struggle. Inventive, darkly comic and profoundly touching, Censoring an Iranian Love Story celebrates both the unquenchable power of the written word and a love that is doomed, glorious, and utterly real.
Download or read book Persian Literature and Modernity written by Hamid Rezaei Yazdi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Persian Literature and Modernity recasts the history of modern literature in Iran by elucidating the bonds between the classical tradition and modernity and exploring textual, generic and discursive formations through heterodoxical investigations. This is first done through the rehabilitation of concepts embedded in tradition, including the munāzirah (debate), Ahrīman (the demonic), tajarrud (radical aloneness) and nāriz̤āyatī (discontent). Following this are broader structural and processual treatments, including the emergence of the genre of the social novel, the international dimension of Persian and Persianate canon formation, and the development of salvage ethnography and anthropological discourse in Iran. Covering literary experiments from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries, the chapters in this volume make a case for stepping outside the bounds of orthodox literary scholarship in Iranian studies with its associated political and orientalist determinants in order to provide a more nuanced conception of literary modernity in Iran. Offering an alternative reading of modernity in Persian literature, this book is an invaluable resource for scholars and students interested in the history of modern Iran and Persian Literature.
Download or read book My Uncle Napoleon written by Iraj Pezeshkzad and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most beloved Iranian novel of the twentieth century “God forbid, I’ve fallen in love with Layli!” So begins the farce of our narrator’s life, one spent in a large extended Iranian family lorded over by the blustering, paranoid patriarch, Dear Uncle Napoleon. When Uncle Napoleon’s least-favorite nephew falls for his daughter, Layli, family fortunes are reversed, feuds fired up and resolved, and assignations attempted and thwarted. First published in Iran in the 1970s and adapted into a hugely successful television series, this beloved novel is now “Suggested Reading” in Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. My Uncle Napoleon is a timeless and universal satire of first love and family intrigue.
Download or read book Hedayat s Blind Owl as a Western Novel written by Michael Beard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iranian writer Sadeq Hedayat is the most influential figure in twentieth-century Persian fiction--and the object of a kind of cult after his suicide in 1951. His masterpiece The Blind Owl is the most important novel of modern Iran. Its abrupt, tortured opening sentence, "There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker," is one of the best known and most frequently recited passages of modern Persian. But underneath the book's uncanniness and its narrative eccentricities, Michael Beard traces an elegant pastiche of familiar Western traditions. A work of advocacy for a disturbing and powerful piece of fiction, his comprehensive analysis reveals the significance of The Blind Owl as a milestone not only for Persian writing but also for world literature. The international, decentered nature of modernist writing outside the West, typified by Hedayat's European education and wide reading in the Western canon, suggested to Beard the strategy of assessing The Blind Owl as if it were a Western novel. Viewed in this context, Hedayat's intricate chronicle challenges the very notion of a national literature, rethinking and reshaping our traditions until we are compelled, "through its eyes," to see them in a new way. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Persian Boy written by Mary Renault and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 1972 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Told through the eyes of Bagoas, a Persian slave boy who becomes confidant, advisor, and lover to Alexander. Bagoas remains faithful to Alexander through months of separation during the conquest of Greece, and stands by his side despite treacherous efforts to discredit and dethrone his King, through Alexander's 'relationship' with his boyhood companion Hephaistion, and his 'marriage of convenience' to Roxane.
Download or read book Her Eyes written by Buzurg ʻAlavī and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Her Eyes was originally published in 1952 and is recognized by many scholars as Bozorg Alavi's finest novel. Alavi, a leading contemporary Persian writer and a champion of the Left, is well known for his political activism, which led to his imprisonment in Iran under the regime of Reza Shah. Her Eyes is the story of Farangis, a member of the Iranian upper class whose life of leisure has left her without employable skills. Despairing, she enrolls in a Parisian art school, only to discover that she is severely lacking as a painter. She returns to Iran to participate in the political activities of Ostad Makan, Iran's greatest painter. This most popular of Alavi's novels, translated into English for the first time, presents a realistic picture of 20th-century Iran in the throes of rapid, forced modernization. Co-published with the Persian Heritage Foundation.
Download or read book History of Iranian Literature written by J. Rypka and published by Springer. This book was released on 1968 with total page 966 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some justification seems to be necessary for the addition of yet another History of Iranian Literature to the number of those already in existence. Such a work must obviously contain as many novel features as possible, so that a short explanation of what my collaborators and I had in mind when planning the book is perhaps not superfluous. In the first place our object was to present a short summary of the material in all its aspects, and secondly to review the subject from the chronological, geo graphical and substantial standpoints - all within the compass of a single volume. Such a scheme precludes a formal and complete enumeration of names and phenom ena, and renders all the greater the obligation to accord most prominence to matters deemed to be of greatest importance, supplementing these with such figures and forms as will enable an impression to be gained of the period in question - all this is far as possible in the light of the most recent discoveries. A glance at the table of contents will suffice to give an idea of the multifarious approach that has been our aim. We begin at the very first traces of evidence bearing on our subject and continue the narrative up to the present day. Geographically the book embraces Iran and its neighbouring countries, while it should be remarked that Iranian literature in its fullest sense also includes Indo-Persian and Judeo-Persian works.
