SHAHRIAR MANDANIPOUR

Visiting Writer in the Department of Literature and Comparative Literature
Harvard University

“How I Became an Iranian Writer”

Tuesday November 25, 2008
6 p.m.
Harvard Faculty Club
20 Quincy Street

The reading will be followed by a buffet dinner 

Shahriar Mandanipour, winner of the Mehregan Award and the prestigious Golden Tablet Award, has published nine books of fiction, one book of nonfiction, and over one hundred essays.  For ten years, he was chief editor of Asr-e Pandishanbeh (translated as Thursday Evening), a widely respected Iranian literary magazine publishing the work of acclaimed writers from all over the world. Earlier this year, this magazine was banned in Iran; in response, Mandanipour has taken considerable risks by speaking out against this injustice, giving interviews to Voice of America and other controversial (in Iran) media outlets. In his lecture, he will discuss the major influences, both historical and aesthetic, that have shaped his work as a writer; he will also read, in Farsi, from his recently completed novel, Censoring an Iranian Love Story, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2009.  Jane Unrue, of the Expository Writing Program, will read from the work in English translation.  For more information about this fascinating book, please see the abstract below.

The lecture and reading will be followed by a question period and a buffet dinner.  In order to help us plan for the right number of guests, if you plan to attend the dinner, please RSVP to Wanda Di Bernardo (dibernar@fas.harvard.edu) no later than November 18, 2008.

Censoring an Iranian Love Story, by Shahriar Mandanipour (Abstract)
Forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf, 2009

Censoring an Iranian Love Story tells the story of a young woman, a university student, and a young man, previously a political prisoner, with rich wit and humor. The author himself is present in the novel, and in conjunction with writing his story, he speaks to the reader of the complexities of writing a love story under the threat of the censorship imposed by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
        The two narratives are intertwined:  In one, we read of the difficulties, fears and trepidations that surround the meeting of the young couple at a time when gender separation is forcefully imposed on the society and the omnipresent Islamic guards and patrols arrest young couples who display any degree of closeness; in the other, we read of the difficulties of a writer who struggles to overcome the censor.  
        The young couple in the story first use books borrowed from a public library to communicate. One will borrow a book and place dots under certain characters throughout the text. The other will borrow the same book and connect the dotted characters to decipher a message. As their story evolves, scene by scene we become more familiar with the struggles they face in preserving their love and the creative schemes they contrive to lessen the risk of discovery and arrest. For example, they rendezvous in the waiting area of an emergency room in a private hospital … they opt for computer chats and avoid telephones for fear that the boy’s home may be monitored … And of course we realize how each scheme gradually, negatively, impacts their love.
        In the second storyline that parallels the first, two other personalities are at work – the writer and the censorship agent. The writer takes us along as he composes each sentence and creates each scene of his love story and shares with us his anxieties over the censorship agent’s judgments. Will he dictate deletion, or revision, or will he altogether oppose publication of the book?  The writer explains how he will write scenes in ways that the censorship agent will not fully comprehend or will not be able to take issue with. In various scenes, the writer and the censorship agent converse and the latter’s strange personality begins to impose itself on the writer’s subconscious and conscious mind. The sentences that the writer self-censors appear as strikethroughs in the text.
        The writer’s comical efforts at surmounting the walls of censorship and advancing his story by a host of tricks in fact resembles the struggles of the young lovers to preserve their love and to overcome barriers to their amorous meetings. The writer’s narrative of himself unfolds as the dark side of the love story’s moon.
        Several fantastical characters, especially from the Tales of One Thousand and One Nights, make brief appearances in the story. Besides enriching the plot and stirring its humor and absurdity, they are symbols of traditions and ghosts from the past that weigh on Iranian society. 
        In this novel, besides reading an Iranian love story, we also learn of the various forms and mechanisms of censorship in Iran:  Official censorship, public censorship, and self-censorship.