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| Scheherazade and Her Novelist |
Charifi, a young man destined to become a writer, is threatened by characters out of a novel he has yet to write, who try to prevent the story of their future tyranny, brutality, and murders from being told by attempting to kill him while he is still a child. Azadeh—short for Scheherazade—a beautiful and intelligent woman married to Bib-Oghli, Charifi's cousin, contributes to his artistic education by inciting him to read all manner of books, especially novels. Thanks to her, the reader is able to follow each of the novel's intricately woven plots, especially when we learn that Charifi and his companions are characters out of yet another novel, that of Dr. Reza, who was asked to deliver an unusual manuscript.
This novel, by a leading Iranian novelist and poet born in 1935, is already considered a classic by many French critics. (A French edition was published by Fayard in August 2002.) A true continuation of The Arabian Nights, and inspired by the same oral tradition it unites East and West with the diversity and richness of its narrative and is also a remarkable outcry against tyranny, especially that of ruling factions in Iran before and after the revolution.
In 1977, Harper's magazine called Reza Baraheni "Iran's finest living poet." His work includes Crowned Cannibals, a collection of prose and poetry, Les saisons en enfer du jeune Ayyaz, and The Infernal Times of Mr. Ayaz, published in Alberto Manguel's anthology, God's Spies. His God's Shadow: Prison Poems is a collection of poems based on his 102 days in solitary confinement during the Shah's rule. He now lives in Canada where he is president of PEN Canada and a visiting Professor at the University of Toronto.
Recommended by Monique Di Donna.
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