Interrelation of History and Nationhood in Contemporary Persian Historical Fiction

Abstract

The present article discusses how terrains of belonging are constructed and articulated textually through historical novels which bring the past into the present, and link the national identity of people to memories of their ancestors, to their nation’s glorious past. The rise of the historical novel in Iran was concomitant with Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which was hailed by many a critic and historian as a major time of sociopolitical awakening which contributed to protecting the cultural legacies of the past and keeping aglow the propitious light of belonging and nationhood. Historiography has been a fecund ground for Iranian fiction-writers in which to retrieve a sense of national identity. This article aims at showing how Persian historical novels foreground the symbiotic relationship between remembering and belonging, and open up texts to their national significances.

A Comparative Exploration of Gender Representations in Persian Sufi Literature and Modern Literary Works

“…Women without Men (2011, pp:1-140) and Touba and the Meaning of Night (2006, pp:1-418), two of Parsipur's novels, investigate the lives of Iranian women and the intersections of their gender with other identities, such as class and religion (Koirala & Eshghavi, 2017). Parsipur's works draw light on the diverse experiences of Iranian women while also challenging the patriarchal rules that dominate their life (Farahmandfar & Abdollahi, 2022). Laleh Khadivi, an Iranian-American author, is another example of intersectionality in current Persian literature.…”

“…Khadivi's works, such as The Walking (2014, pp: 1-261) examine the lives of Iranian immigrants in America and the interconnections of their ethnicity, class, and religion. Khadivi's work underscores the difficulties that immigrants encounter as they navigate their numerous identities in a new cultural context (Farahmandfar & Abdollahi, 2022). Besides, Forugh Farrokhzad (1934-1967, an Iranian poet, is an example of intersectionality in modern Persian literature.…”