The Global Circulation of an Iranian Bestseller

Abstract

Memoirs by Iranian women in the diaspora have long been the standard reading for western readers interested in Iran. However, The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee, a popular novel newly translated into English and many other European languages, interpolates both the orientalist discourse memoirs offer and the Iranian memoirs industry. The translation of this Iranian text with a feminist Islamic discourse inserts the book into a global context that allows the perception of Iran to impact on western stereotypes. Assisted by its writer, literary agent, translator and publisher, it also has the agency, a ‘distributed agency’ to interpolate the dominant system of publishing and circulation. My methodology is a combination of close reading, postcolonial theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of the literary field, which I adapt to the Iranian and English-speaking context. I analyse the publishing processes in Iran and in English-speaking countries, the book covers, the reception of major literary awards, commercial success, and critical reception (critics, media attention, reviews by general readers on websites such as Amazon and Goodreads).