Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature Paperback – January 2, 2013

I know I am unlearned on most other cultures. I do read about the practices and views of people in other parts of the world. Their worldviews have been going on for a long, long time. But I still can't grasp the notion that in this reality with our world encircling communications, people still accept a world as described in these stories. I haven't finished all of them yet. It is a struggle. Supposedly the authors are people who have tried to stand against both the despotic Shah as well as the fanatically religious revolutionaries. But the stories assume that women are inferior, religious practices are acceptable and "resistance is futile" for the most part. The animosity and negativity of most of the stories is wearing. I suppose it is a good thing for me to read as it makes me much more positive about my world.

This is a terrific introduction to contemporary Iranian prose and poetry. The collection offers an invaluable insight into Iranian culture from a variety of socio-economic and historical perspectives, and fully demonstrates the continuity of rich tradition between the classical and modern eras. It's essential for an understanding of present-day realities unfiltered and unprejudiced by sensational media.

I liked that it gives a historical perspective through the stories told. One learns about the turmoil, the fall and rise of dynasties and the people's aspirations through it all.

I needed this book for one of my classes since my professor is one of the authors. I use the book often for assignments. It arrived in a timely manner and it is in great condition.Thank you!

Brilliant, bold, and most important, the voice of a people who have been marginalized. Thank you for publishing this beautiful book.

Nice collection, great intro! Anyone interested in the politics and culture of Iran should give a read. Until I read this book I didn't understand the scope of Iranian literature.

Interesting book

This book came out in 2005 and focused on prose and poetry published originally in Persian since the 1979 revolution, by writers in Iran and abroad. It contained 66 works by 43 authors. There were 17 short stories, 5 excerpts from novels, and 44 poems.Most of the prose works were clearly dated and were published between 1980 and about 2001, with nearly all from the 1980s and 90s. The poetry comprised about 20% of the book, with the year of original publication not provided. Of all the writers in the collection, 13 were women.The authors were roughly from three generations, chosen by Iranian critics on the basis of quality. Among the prose writers, the oldest were Simin Daneshvar (1921-), Iraj Pezeshkzad (1928-), Ahmad Mahmud (1931-2002), and Taghi Modarressi (1931-97). The youngest were Farideh Kheradmand (1957-), Shahriar Mandanipour (1957-) and Seyyed Ebrahim Nabavi (1958-). Others included Esmail Fassih (1935-), Hushang Golshiri (1937-2000), Goli Taraghi (1939-), Mahmud Dowlatabadi (1940-), Hadi Khorsandi (1943-), Nassim Khaksar (1944-), Shahrnush Parsipur (1946-), Ghazaleh Alizadeh (1948-96), Moniru Ravanipur (1954-) and Gahzi Rabihavi (1956-).Important novels that were excerpted included Ahmad Mahmud's Scorched Earth (1982), which described a town's experience of the outbreak of war with Iraq, Fassih's Sorraya in a Coma (1983), about its narrator's journey from Tehran to Paris, and Parsipur's Women without Men (published in 1989 but written more than a decade earlier), about the experiences of five strong women.In connection with writing during the period, the editor's introduction mentioned briefly the 1979 revolution, the subsequent political purges, economic hardship, religious repression and censorship, and the brutal 1980-88 war with Iraq. Outside the scope of the anthology but definitely in the background were the combination of modernization and repression under the Shah's regime, the growth of leftist, nationalist and religious opposition to it, and the coup against Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953 that had restored the Shah to power and been supported by Great Britain and the United States.In the near present, another relevant factor was the emigration of many writers, both before and after the revolution: at the time the collection was published, 11 of the 22 prose writers anthologized, and 11 of the 21 poets, were living abroad or had died in exile. Since this book was published, 2 more of the prose writers have also left Iran (Ravanipur, Mandanipour).The prose in the collection was described as ranging from realism and social realism, to an Iranian version of magical realism, to complex psychological stream of consciousness, to various styles of postmodern prose, often allegorical or allusive. Some of the authors' works were concerned with the war with Iraq (Ahmad, Ahgai), or with political events of the Mossadegh period (Alizadeh). Others focused on the condition of men or women in the present day, in ways that were understandable (Simin Daneshvar, Golshiri, Dowlatabadi, Parsipur, Reza Farrokhfal, Ravanipur, Rabihavi, Kheradmand) or more experimental and opaque (Modarressi, Taraghi, Reza Daneshvar, Asghar Abdollahi, Mandanipour). Some writers were concerned humorously or darkly with exile (Pezeshkzad, Khorsandi, Khaksar) or in more light-hearted ways with youth (Seyyed Ebrahim Nabavi, Behnam Dayani).More than a tenth of the space in the book was given to one short story by Taraghi, which probed the emotional world of a character in extreme detail, to a point beyond my grasp. Most enjoyed were a short story by Ravanipur in which an educated young woman returned to her village and found it in the grip of custom and superstition, and in which feelings, sights, sounds and smells were described with great power. The excerpt from Fassih's novel described a long journey by bus during wartime to the border with Turkey, in which the narrator's sense of humor, powers of observation and sophistication came through clearly. Simin Daneshvar's short story concerned problems faced by a schoolgirl, blending realism and surrealism. Khaksar's story caught well the feeling of displacement of an outsider in Europe.Of the poets, the oldest were Nader Naderpur (1919-2000), Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000), and Simin Behbahani (1927-). The youngest were Roya Hakakian (1966-), Ziba Karbasi (1974-) and Granaz Moussavi (1974-). Also included were Esmail Khoi (1938-), the filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (1940-) and Partow Nooriala (1946-). Naderpur and Khoi in particular were cited as poets of exile.A brief introduction to the poetry mentioned the influence of 19th century Romantic poetry and later modernism from Europe, and the influence of leftist, socially committed poetry from the 1930s, 60s and 70s. Centuries earlier, the court poetry between the 900s and 1300s, by names such as Rudaki, Ferdowsi, Manuchehri, Omar Khayyam, Nezami, Attar, Rumi and Hafez, was described as embodying a rich oral tradition that provided a foundation for many later poets.Most of the works in this section were beyond my understanding, but a few were very moving: Shamlou's "In This Blind Alley," which criticized the narrow-mindedness of the censor and described a turning inward to protect against the loss of important values; Khoi's "Outlandia," which described the alienation felt by an outsider in a Western land, Nuriala's "I Am Human," a beautiful statement of what it meant to be human, and Kiarostami's "Walking with the Wind," which contained minute observations of nature, taken like snapshots. A refrain from Shamlou's poem provided the source for the anthology's title: "In this crooked blind alley, as the chill descends / they feed fires / with logs of song and poetry. / Hazard not a thought: / These are strange times, my dear . . . . / Satan, drunk on victory, / squats at the feast of our undoing. / Let's hide God in the larder."Other poems of interest were Hakakian's poem about the need to move forward after breaking with a lover, getting up and walking away from the tombstone of her memory. A poem by Mehdi Akhavan-Saless expressing extravagant love for the poets, landscape and earlier, Zoroastrian religion of his homeland. A poem by Reza Baraheni that might've been written by a Western modernist, though it also incorporated references to Persian court poets. And something by Shams Langerudi invoking Saladdin and referring to the "harlots of the Gulf" whom the world's banks had enriched.I felt grateful for the window into Iranian creative writing that this anthology provided. This book is one of the few large options available for readers looking for English-language collections of such writing by Iranians. It might be read together with the other large collection, Stories from Iran: A Chicago Anthology 1921-1991 (1992), which covered a mostly earlier period, focused on prose and included many writers who were outside the scope of the present book.

A thorough book of Iranian Literature poems and essays. I am happy with the book thought which I can touch such deep culture and discover new names!

Ok