Savushun: A Novel About Modern Iran: A Novel About Modern Iran

by Simin Daneshvar, M.R. Ghanoonparvar (Translator), Brian Spooner (Introduction)

Overview

Savushun chronicles the life of a Persian family during the Allied occupation of Iran during World War II. It is set in Shiraz, a town which evokes images of Persepolis and pre-Islamic monuments, the great poets, the shrines, Sufis, and nomadic tribes within a historical web of the interests, privilege and influence of foreign powers; corruption, incompetence and arrogance of persons in authority; the paternalistic landowner-peasant relationship; tribalism; and the fear of famine. The story is seen through the eyes of Zari, a young wife and mother, who copes with her idealistic and uncompromising husband while struggling with her desire for traditional family life and her need for individual identity.

 

Daneshvar’s style is both sensitive and imaginative, while following cultural themes and metaphors. Within basic Iranian paradigms, the characters play out the roles inherent in their personalities. While Savushun is a unique piece of literature that transcends the boundaries of the historical community in which it was written, it is also the best single work for understanding modern Iran. Although written prior to the Islamic Revolution, it brilliantly portrays the social and historical forces that gave pre-revolutionary Iran its characteristic hopelessness and emerging desperation so inadequately understood by outsiders.

 

Note: The original Persian edition of Savushun has sold over half a million copies. The German language edition is available from Amazon.de (Amazon.com’s German branch)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933823522
Publisher:	Mage Publishers Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	322
Sales rank:	862,452
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Among contemporary writers of Iran, the majority of whom are men, one woman stands out: Simin Daneshvar. Her work has developed and matured since the late 1940s, and today she is known as one of Iran’s best fiction writers. Her masterpiece novel Savushun (Mourning for Siavash), published in 1969, is considered the climax of Persian novel writing. Daneshvar, like most contemporary Iranian writers, came from a middle-class family. Born in 1921 in Shiraz, she was educated in a missionary school and became fluent in English. She began her writing career as early as 1935, when she was still an eighth-grader. Her first article, “Winter Is Not Unlike Our Life,” was published in a local Shiraz newspaper. She entered Tehran University and majored in Persian literature.
M.R. Ghanoonparvar is a Professor Emeritus of Persian and Comparative Literature at the faculty of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas, Austin, whose expertise includes the works of Simin Daneshvar, Sadeq Chubak, and Sadeq Hedayat.
Brian J. Spooner is a Professor of Anthropology, Undergraduate Chair at Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and Curator of Near Eastern Ethnology at the Penn Museum. His many works are on subjects including Cultural and social anthropology; globalization, Islam, Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia; social organization, religion, ethnohistory, ecology, non-industrial economies.