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Shahriar Mandanipour

“Censoring an Iranian Love Story”

MICHIKO KAKUTANI writes in The New York Times: In what now reads like an eerie echo of the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young Iranian woman cut down by a bullet during this month’s election protests and captured on video, the Iranian author of this new novel foresees the possible death of his heroine in the streets of Tehran: “The girl does not know that in precisely seven minutes and seven seconds, at the height of the clash between the students, the police, and the members of the Party of God, in the chaos of attacks and escapes, she will be knocked into with great force, she will fall back, her head will hit against a cement edge, and her sad Oriental eyes will forever close.”

Her fellow students, “aware that they are about to be attacked, break into a heartrending anthem:

My fellow schoolmate,


you are with me and beside me,
... you are my tear and my sigh,
... the scars of the lashes of tyranny rest on our bodies.”

“Censoring an Iranian Love Story” by Shahriar Mandanipour — an Iranian writer who is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard — is, at once, a novel about two young Iranians trying to conduct a covert romance in Tehran; a postmodern account of the efforts of their creator — or his fictional alter ego — to grapple with the harsh censorship rules of his homeland; and an Escher-like meditation on the interplay of life and art, reality and fiction >>>30-Jun-2009
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Azarin Sadegh

Please Read New Yorker's article about him!

by Azarin Sadegh on

I had never heard of this guy (who seems being a famous writer in Iran)..until last week when I read the article about him in New Yorker!

After reading a few pages on Amazon, I ordered my copy and I'm already so impatient to read the rest! He seems a wonderful writer with a sharp sense of humor. I'm happy that now great Iranian writers get finally translated and published here. We do have so many of them now in Iran, as The Great Art has always been the product of overflowing misery and pain, plus the lack of happiness.

Thank you JJ for making him the Iranian of the Day! Azarin


Nazy Kaviani

I can't wait

by Nazy Kaviani on

I can't wait to read Shahriar Mandanipour's new book. I have been hearing about it for a while now. Mandanipour is a unique and sensitive voice in contemporary Iranian literature. I saw him in Berkeley two years ago and he read us sketches of his developing story for this book. I'm glad to see that during his time away from Iran, he is keeping productive. As an accomplished writer and a publisher, Mandanipour should know all about censorship in Iran and I am certain his story will tell things which could never pass the censorship in Iran. I'm glad we will get to see his thoughts uncensored and uninterrupted this time.