Censoring an Iranian Love Story
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Love story offers glimpse of today's Iran
REVIEW BY LAUREN BUFFERD What do we really know about life in Iran? Scanning newspaper headlines and CNN crawlers may bring us up to the moment, but literature opens a door that no amount of accumulated sound bites can. Censoring an Iranian Love Story, a new novel by Shahriar Mandanipour and his first translated into English, is part political allegory, part love story. Its unique perspective will dazzle and amuse, but also deepen the reader's understanding of a complex country. Censoring tells the story of a well-known Iranian writer, with, coincidentally, the same name as the author, who is determined to write a bewitching and evocative love story set in modern-day Iran. While this may seem like nothing special to the Western reader, in Iran, authors must submit their writing to a censorship board before publication. Mandanipour has spent years manipulating his stories to please the all-powerful censor at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance whose eagle eye is alert to any hint of political misconduct or sinful behavior. In Mandanipour's imagined manuscript, proud Dara and beautiful Sara, whose names simultaneously recall schoolbook characters and the Iranian version of Barbie and Ken, are forbidden to be alone together. Their secret love affair is conducted in opaque emails and encoded notes placed in library books. Their love story runs parallel to Mandanipour's ongoing struggle with the censor, which reads almost like a thriller. Censoring includes scenes that can never appear in the final manuscript, as well as sentences and words crossed out, suggesting that authors become their own harshest critics under censorship. Several fictional characters from Iranian literature appear in the novel, as do references to Kafka, Orwell and, unexpectedly, Danielle Steel, adding a healthy dose of absurdity. In fact, the remarkable thing about Censoring is how funny it is—not just the bitter humor of irony, but the wit of a literate, broad-minded, slightly cheeky author sharing some hard-earned wisdom. Lauren Bufferd writes from Nashville.
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