As Iran muzzled journalists and forced a media blackout this week, the New Yorker gives readers a glimpse of the country in a review of Shahriar Mandanipour’s new novel, “Censoring an Iranian Love Story.”
As James Wood explains in his thoughtful essay, the postmodern novel follows the forbidden interaction between two young lovers, the text literally censored with snippets of strike-through text. The characters flit between cemeteries, hospitals, and political rallies, trying to love in the shadow of an oppressive regime.
Here’s more from the review: “How might one write a love story about a young man and woman, set in a country in which the unmarried couple is not allowed to spend any significant time together? At the beginning of ‘Censoring an Iranian Love Story,’ two Tehran natives, Dara and Sara, meet at a student demonstration outside Tehran University, and spend the next two hundred and eighty pages attempting not so much to consummate their relationship as simply to begin it.” (Via Literary Saloon)