Who Writes Iran? Counter-narratives and the Transition from Personal to Collective Historiography in Contemporary Fiction

Abstract

This article is an account of a particular version of a known phenomenon in Persian literature; that is, literature that takes on the responsibility of journalism. In Iran, as in many other societies, limitations imposed by the political apparatus on the field of journalism have placed and are placing a significant part of the responsibilities of that field on the shoulders of the literary discourse. This phenomenon, particularly after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, has become more visible. Indeed it has led to the emergence of a category called Gozaresh-Qesseh (Report-Story) to designate this subgenre. Referring to a number of recent Persian works of fiction, this article explores the function of mythic elements employed in these texts to define the interaction between competing historiographical narratives. It also attempts to define the space created as a result of both clashes and cooperation between history and fiction in modern Persian literature.