That’s what Shahriar Mandanipour’s most recent novel cries out—uncensor my story! Allow it to develop in all it’s full, complicated, and deeply troublesome detail. The author’s plea seems to be half-fulfilled in the published product. One the one hand, despite the title—Censoring an Iranian Love Story—the author writes an uncensored book. But the novel is hardly free of the weight of censorship and the terror it brings. From the cover on forward, Mandanipour offers a thoughtful investigation of the meaning of censorship and love—particularly the deep relationship between the two in modern Iranian—at every step.
Just as the cover censors (with a golden screen) while allowing you to see the woman behind it, so too the book censors while providing you the full story. To explain—the premise of the novel is that an author, Shahriar, is composing a love story for publication in Iran. In order to get the book past government censors, he must severely curtail what he wishes to write. As Shahriar develops his love story between two characters named Sara and Dara, Mandanipour employs two helpful writing techniques. First, he marks off the censored story of Dara and Sara in bold type so that the regular type face that tells Shahriar’s tale reads as more of an author’s commentary on writing in Iran. Second, Mandanipour occasionally crosses out sections of the bold type Sara-Dara story that would be censored (the lines are still readable through the cross-out), so the reader can see the agonizing process of living and writing in Iran.
Mandanipour often plays Shahriar’s concern with the censors against Dara and Sara’s fear of developing a relationship in a country where unmarried men and women cannot legally intermingle. It’s a fruitful way of exploring a society where writing about love and falling in love are both deep perils, complete with serious legal consequences. To me, the brillance of the book is that it allows readers to experience the constant limitations and stress that life in modern Iran places on individuals. I’ve read plenty about Iranian censorship in a variety of arenas, but Mandanipour’s creative style of writing allows you to experience it on a more substantial level as you become involved not only a love story where the young lovers must watch their steps ever so carefully but also in the process of writing this very story with unlivable limitations on what’s fit to print.
Perhaps the greatest value of the book is as a window of insight into contemporary Iranian society, particularly the perils of publishing. But the author’s investigation of love as an experience and emotion is also not to be underestimated. Mandanipour makes full use of the constraints society places on his characters in order to probe and develop their feelings all the more potently. He also makes nice, if occasionally somewhat confusing use, of the Persian literary tradition. If you don’t know the Arabian Nights and Khusrau and Shirin, then you won’t miss much, but the added touches are a nice way to connect his work to the past for those with a basic knowledge of Persian literature.
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