As I have mentioned before as well, my reading agenda for 2021, besides reading a total of 60 books, is to read a specific genre each month. 'Contemporary Fiction' in Jan, 'Nonfiction Science' Feb, and now for March it is going to be 'Iranina Literature'. I love Iran. Their language, culture, arts, philosophy of life, simplicity, resilience, and so many more things are at once appealing and loveable. I have never been to Iran, but if I had to choose my place birth again, I'd definitely choose it to be Iran. The only way to really connect to Iran, for me, has been her cinema. As I mentioned in my review of 'The Gardens of Consolation' by Parisa Reza, first book of this month, that after watching 'The Children of Paraside' years back with my elder siblings, I fell in love with Iranian movies. And to this day, I often treat myself with gifting myself the pleasure of watching an Iranian movie.
Iranian Literature, then, should understandably have been my favorite too. But sadly, so far, I have not read any literature from Iran, nor am aware of their eminent writers. Besides Baqer Moin's biography of Ayatollah Khomeini, I had read next to nothing from Iran. That was until this month.
Last year, Shookofeh Azar's novel 'Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree' was nominated for the International Booker Prize, a novel from Iran. And soon after, Lithub published an article where they listed 35 essential books from Iran to read. And so, my journey was set out for this month to read all things 'Iranian Literature'. WIthout much further ado, here's what I will be reading in March of 2021.
1: The Gardens of Consolation by Parisa Reza
In the early 1920s in the remote village of Ghamsar, Talla
and Sardar, two teenagers dreaming of a better life, fall in love and marry.
Sardar brings his young bride with him across the mountains to the suburbs of
Tehran, where the couple settles down and builds a home. From the outskirts of
the capital city, they will watch as the Qajar dynasty falls and Reza Khan
rises to power as Reza Shah Pahlavi. Into this family of illiterate shepherds
is born Bahram, a boy whose brilliance and intellectual promise are apparent
from a very young age. Through his education, Bahram will become a fervent
follower of reformer Mohamed Mossadegh and will participate first hand in his
country’s political and social upheavals.
2: The Stationary Shop of Iran by Marjan Kamali
Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.
Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to
his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for
justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once. Their
romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place
in all of Tehran.
A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she moves on—to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England—until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me?
3: The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
The Blind Owl is Sadegh Hedayat's magnum opus and a major
literary work of 20th century Iran. Written in Persian, it tells the story of
an unnamed pen case painter, the narrator, who sees in his macabre, feverish
nightmares that "the presence of death annihilates all that is imaginary.
4: The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shookofeh Azar
An extraordinarily powerful and evocative literary novel set
in Iran in the period immediately after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Using
the lyrical magic realism style of classical Persian storytelling, Azar draws
the reader deep into the heart of a family caught in the maelstrom of
post-revolutionary chaos and brutality that sweeps across an ancient land and
its people. The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is really an embodiment of
Iranian life in constant oscillation, struggle, and play between four opposing
poles: life and death; politics and religion. The sorrow residing in the depths
of our joy is the product of a life between these four poles.
5: Disoriental by Negar Djavadi