Renegotiating the Contemporary Iranian/Persian Literary Landscape: Afghan – Iranian Prose Literature

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Goulia Ghardashkhani

Abstract

The growing body of works by writers of Afghan heritage in Iran, focused on the experience of war and displacement, has led to the emergence of hyphenated Afghan – Iranian prose literature. Novels and short stories written by Mohammad Hoseyn Mohammadi, ʿAliyeh ʿAtayi, and Ziya Qasemi are among the examples. Written in (Afghan) Persian, demonstrating a high degree of literary quality, and published by first – rate Iranian publishers of contemporary literature, these works unsettle the sociocultural definitions of margins and center in Iran. Apart from this, having conveyed their stories across the Afghan/Iranian geopolitical borders, they have created a textual locus within which the transnational implications of modern and contemporary Persian/Iranian literature as a field are renegotiated.


In the present paper, I will discuss the significance of this literature on two levels: First, I will situate this literature within the Iranian contemporary literary system by taking into account the literary content of these works as well as their reception. Second, I will focus on the implications the emergence of this literature has for modern and contemporary Persian/Iranian literature as a disciplinary field. What is this literature about and what is its impact on what we define as the contemporary Persian/Iranian literary landscape.

Published: Nov 14, 2022

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Section
Between Chaos and Discipline: Iranian Comparative Literature