Censoring an Iranian Love Story

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - ＂One of Iran’s most important living fiction writers＂ (The Guardian) shows what it’s like to live and love there today.

＂A haunting portrait of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran.＂ --The New York Times

In a country where mere proximity between a man and a woman may be the prologue to deadly sin, where illicit passion is punished by imprisonment, or even death, telling that most redemptive of human narratives becomes the greatest literary challenge. If conducting a love affair in modern Iran is not a simple undertaking, then telling the story of that love may be even more difficult.

Shahriar Mandanipour (author of Moon Brow) evokes a pair of young lovers who find each other--despite surreal persecution and repressive parents--through coded messages and internet chat rooms; and triumphantly their story entwines with an account of their creator’s struggle. Inventive, darkly comic and profoundly touching, Censoring an Iranian Love Story celebrates both the unquenchable power of the written word and a love that is doomed, glorious, and utterly real.

Shahriar Mandanipour has won numerous awards for his novels, short stories, and nonfiction in Iran, although he was unable to publish his fiction from 1992 until 1997 as a result of censorship. He came to the United States in 2006 as the third International Writers Project Fellow at Brown University. His work has appeared in PEN America, The Literary Review, and The Kenyon Review.

www.mandanipour.net