Book & Persian Literature

[Rasputin]

در جلسهي سخنراني كه در دانشگاه يو سي ال اي در لسآنجلس برگزار شد، مجيد روشنگر آثاري را از ادبيات مهاجرت را نقد و بررسي كرد.

در اين جلسه كه بهخاطر انتشار كتاب «از روي آتش پريدن» (بهزبان انگليسي)، از ناهيد راكلين - نويسندهي ايراني مقيم آمريكا - برگزار شده بود، مجيد روشنگر در سخنراني با موضوع «ادبيات مهاجرت به عنوان يك ژانر جديد در ادبيات فارسي» به بررسي اين موضوع پرداخت.

پس از روخواني بخشهايي از كتاب يادشده توسط نويسنده، روشنگر در سخنراني خود علاوه بر روخواني بخشهايي از داستانهاي «چه كسي باور ميكند رستم» روحانگيز شريفيان، «همنوايي شبانهي اركستر چوبها»ي رضا قاسمي و اشاره به كتابهايي همچون مجموعهي شعر «دوربين قديمي» از عباس صفاري، «ماهيها در شب ميخوابند» سودابه اشرفي، « هتل ماركوپولو»ي خسرو دوامي و «دكتر نون زنش را بيشتر از مصدق دوست دارد» شهرام رحيميان، به بررسي عناصر بومي و پديده مهاجرت در كتاب «از روي آتش پريدن» پرداخت.

او با اشاره به محتوا، ساختار، فضا، مكان و زبان در يك رمان يا شعر به تفاوت حضور اين عناصر در يك اثر كه در يك فضاي بومي نوشته شده و اثري كه در فضايي غيربومي نوشته شده است، پرداخت

[Rasputin]

King of the Benighted

Author: Manuchehr Irani (Houshang Golshiri)




King of the Benighted was mailed out of Iran page by page. It is both a firsthand account of the hard realities of life under the Islamic Republic and a literary masterpeice by one of Iran's best contemporary writers, Houshang Golshiri, who wrote under the pen name Manuchehr Golshiri to protect his identity. Golshiri has creatively combined modern techniques of fiction with the rich tradition of Persian poetry to tell a timeless tale. The novella invites the reader to join the flow of the artist's imagination and to share moments in the life of a contemporary Iranian poet, including his imprisonment and incredible encounter with a younf prisoner called Sarmad. Should you want to know why Iran has become a nation of mourners, you might follow the poet where he has gone.

[Rasputin]

10 best in U.S.A 2006

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce

2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce

4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov

5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley

6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner

7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller

8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler

9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence

10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck

---

For more info,pls go to ---> http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/

[Rasputin]

Inside Iran: Women's Lives

Author: Jane Howard



TV crews and foreign correspondents come and go, but former BBC correspondent Jane Howard made her home in Iran for five years, raising her two young children there. Her experience took her beyond the headlines and horror stories and into the lives of everyday Iranian women. Her brilliantly observed report, Inside Iran: Women's Lives, takes the reader from dinner in a presidential palace to tea in a nomad's tent. From women working in rice paddies and tea plantations to highly educated women in Tehran who have been banned from working in their professions. The image of Iranian women is still one of anonymous ranks of revolutionary marchers, clad in black. But underneath their black chadors or drab raincoats, they not only wear jeans, T-shirts and Lycra leggings, but they also work outside the home, drive, play sports and even become politicians. While many women haven't regained the Western-style freedom they lost in the revolution of 1979, others have won rights they never had before. Practically every girl has access to primary education now, and even remote villages have clean drinking water, a paved road and a school. Yet Islamic law continues to impose many inequities and constraints. In cash terms, for example, a woman's life is worth half that of a man's, and in the courtroom, two women have to give evidence to equal one man's testimony.

[Rasputin]

Epic and Sedition
The Case of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh

Author: Dick Davis




Iran's national epic, the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, has traditionally been regarded by both Persians and Westerners as a poem celebrating the the central role of monarchy in Persian history. In this groundbreaking book, Dick Davis argues that the poem is far more than a patriotic chronicle of kingly deeds. Rather, it is a subtle and highly ambiguous discussion of authority, and far from being a celebration of monarchy, its most famous episodes and heroes amount to a radical critique of the institution. Davis demonstrates that the public world of kingly authority is shadowed in the poem by a series of tragic father-son relationships, and that in both the royal and familial spheres, authority figures are invariably presented as morally inferior to those whom they govern. The Shahnameh's complex aesthetic structure and its tragic resolution of problems of authority and hierarchy make it an artistic artifact able to take its rightful place beside the major masterpieces of world literature.

[Rasputin]

LOST TREASURES OF PERSIA:

Persian Art in the Hermitage Museum

by Vladimir Loukonine and Anatoli Ivanov




The Hermitage Museum and other institutes, libraries and museums in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union house some of the most magnificent treasures of Persian art. Many of these works are published and cataloged here for the first time with an unsurpassed selection of color plates. In an expansive introduction Vladimir Loukonine, Director of the Oriental Art section of the Hermitage Museum, broadly documents the major developments of Persian art: from the first signs of civilization on the plains of Iran some ten centuries BCE up to the early twentieth century. The second part of the book is a catalog of Persian art in the collections of the former Soviet Union giving their location, provenance, descriptions and biographies of the artists when known. Lost Treasures of Persia demonstrates a common theme running through Persian art during the past 3000 years. Despite many religious and political upheavals, Persian art-whether it is in its architecture, sculpture, frescoes, miniatures, porcelain, fabrics or rugs; whether in the work of humble craftsmen or the high art of court painters-displays a delicate touch (letafat) and a subtle refinement that has had a profound influence on art throughout the world.

[Rasputin]

Stories from Iran
A Chicago Anthology

Authors: Edited by Heshmat Moayyad
*Translated by scholars at the University of Chicago
*Authors Listed below with Respective Contributions





This collection of thirty-five Persian short stories by twenty-six of Iran's best known contemporary writers gives voice to the concerns, strivings, and visions of their generation. In styles ranging from the dark to the humorous, from the elegant to the poetic, these stories depict aspects of both traditional and modern life in Iran with its many religious, political, cultural and class tensions. The expanding role of women in Iranian society is attested to both by the large number of women writers included in the volume, and by the central role played by women in many of the stories.

[Rasputin]

The Dream of the Decade (2006)

by Afshin Rattansi

Page 328 - They were new books. A well thumbed copy of his favourite poetry book lay beside
a back issue of a men's magazine and further away a copy a journal entitled .

[EverGreen]

Sia, to age hameye inaro khoondi bayad ta alan professor mishodi ke. Shart mibandam faghat aksasashoono negah mikardi.

[Rasputin]

Lost Wisdom
Rethinking Modernity in Iran

Author: Abbas Milani



"Milani shows that long before the European Renaissance generated the radical ideas that eventually reshaped Europe and the United States, Persian statesmen, artists, and intellectuals had formulated ideas that strikingly anticipate those of modernity.… Lost Wisdom is not only a powerful work of historical analysis; it is also a moving and eloquent account of a series of remarkable individuals, depicted with rare sensitivity and precision."

[Rasputin]

The Persian Sphinx
Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution

Author: Abbas Milani




Who lost Iran? How and why did a country, never richer, never more educated, its women never more liberated erupt in a fundamentalist revolution? the answer can be found in the enthralling life and tragic death of one man.

Amir Abbas Hoveyda was a central figure in the historic struggle between modernity and tradition in Iran -- a struggle pitting Western cosmopolitanism against Persian isolationism, secularism against religious fundamentalism, and ultimately civil society and democracy against authoritarianism.

Born in Tehran in 1919 to a family of solid middle class comforts and faded aristocratic roots, Hoveyda was an elegant, cultivated, well-read, and witty man, educated in Beirut, London, and Brussels.

After entering the Iranian foreign service in 1942, he served in France, Germany, and Turkey, then returned to Iran in 1956 to join the National Iranian Oil Company. In 1965, the shah appointed him the country's prime minister. Hoveyda would serve faithfully in that post for thirteen years.

[Rasputin]

Borrowed Ware
Medieval Persian Epigrams


Author: translated by Dick Davis




In Borrowed Ware, poet and translator Dick Davis brings together a collection of epigrams by poets from the "classic" period of Persian literature. It makes a fascinating introduction to a literature that is little known in the West, and incidentally provides insight into a vanished and extraordinary way of life. Davis's prodigious scholarship of Persian poetry has enabled him to select a wide range of poems, from both famous and little-known poets. The result is some of the best English translations of Persian poetry ever. Davis has maintained exceptional faithfulness to the original Persian while recasting the poems' grace and drive in English. The book also contains a lucid and entertaining introduction, and informative notes on each of the sixty-eight poets whose work is included. Each poem is faced by the text in delicate Persian nasta'liq calligraphy by Amir Hossein Tabnak.

[Rasputin]

Digging to America
by Anne Tyler


Tyler (Breathing Lessons) encompasses the collision of cultures without losing her sharp focus on the daily dramas of modern family life in her 17th novel. When Bitsy and Brad Donaldson and Sami and Ziba Yazdan both adopt Korean infant girls, their chance encounter at the Baltimore airport the day...

[Rasputin]

The Rug Merchant
by Meg Mullins

New York City teems with quiet desperation in this lucidly written but languid debut novel. The titular carpet salesman, Ushman Khan, has left his mother and his wife, Farak, in Iran in order to make a new start in America. Told from Khan's perspective, the narrative traces his subtle acculturation...

[Rasputin]

My Father's Notebook
by Kader Abdolah

The history of Iran in the 20th century glints through the fractured lens of the enigmatic notebook of the deaf-mute carpet mender Aga Akbar in this deeply felt tale. Born to the concubine of a Persian nobleman, Aga Akbar invents a cuneiform language inspired by that of an ancient Persian king in an...