Savushun
A Novel About Modern Iran
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Savushun chronicles the life of a Persian family during the Allied occupation of Iran during World War II. It is set in Shiraz, a town which evokes images of Persepolis and pre-Islamic monuments, the great poets, the shrines, Sufis, and nomadic tribes within a historical web of the interests, privilege and influence of foreign powers; corruption, incompetence and arrogance of persons in authority; the paternalistic landowner-peasant relationship; tribalism; and the fear of famine. The story is seen through the eyes of Zari, a young wife and mother, who copes with her idealistic and uncompromising husband while struggling with her desire for traditional family life and her need for individual identity.
Daneshvar's style is both sensitive and imaginative, while following cultural themes and metaphors. Within basic Iranian paradigms, the characters play out the roles inherent in their personalities. While Savushun is a unique piece of literature that transcends the boundaries of the historical community in which it was written, it is also the best single work for understanding modern Iran. Although written prior to the Islamic Revolution, it brilliantly portrays the social and historical forces that gave pre-revolutionary Iran its characteristic hopelessness and emerging desperation so inadequately understood by outsiders.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The original edition of Daneshvar's archetypal Persian novel about the devastating effects of British occupation on southern Iran during WW II has sold more than 500,000 copies since it was first published in 1969. External events--so critical to the narrative's development--are related largely secondhand; told from the perspective of Zari, the wife of an upper-class landowner, the novel examines her highly proscribed role. Zari is a complex figure, unafraid to question her society's mores. When her husband, Yusof, refuses to sell his harvest to the British against the advice of his brother, a collaborator, he sets in motion a chain of events that leads to the novel's explosive and tragic end. Yusof, intrigued by the communist philosophy of the Soviets then occupying northern Iran, agrees to help rebel tribal chieftains and supplies them with food and advice. Against a backdrop of intrigue and infighting, Daneshvar describes Yusof's essential decency and Zari's quiet heroism; Persian folklore and myth are expertly woven into a modern setting in this powerfully resonant work.
