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| Jafar Modarres-Sadeqi |
Fiction/Novel |
| Marsh |
| [Gavkhuni] |
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| Translated from the Persian by Afkham Darbandi. |
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| The Marsh is a novella presented as the first person narrative of a young, unnamed, male narrator. The story opens with a dream made up of the narrator’s memories of bathing as a boy, in company with his father and his father’s friends, in Isfahan’s Zayandehrud river. The narrator marries after the death of his father. Gradually he becomes alienated from daily life, and lives out an obsessive imaginary relationship with his dead father. As the novel proceeds we see him withdraw from his wife and her family, as well as from his former friends and job in Tehran, until he—and the reader— are quite unable to distinguish reality from hallucinatory fantasy. The novel ends with an ambiguous closure that may indicate death or a final descent into all-encompassing psychosis. |
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 | Jafar Modarres-Sadeqi
Ja’far Modarres-Sadeqi belongs to the Isfahan School of fiction writing. The original core of this school was established by the prominent novelist and short story writer, Hushang Golshiri; the well-known poet, Mohammad Hoquqi; and the famous translator, Abolfazl Najafi. Together they began publishing the important literary journal Jong-e Isfahan in 1965. Later, other writers, poets, literary critics, and translators joined the group, among them Bahram Sadeqi, one of the most innovative and talented writers in twentieth-century Iran, as well as novelist Mohammad Kalbasi, novelist and literary critic Hormoz Shahdadi, and prominent translator and literary critic Ahmad Mir’ala’i. In a sense, this group created a change of direction, especially in Persian fiction, from the engagè writing of the 1960s, which mainly focused on social and political issues, to the craft of modern fiction. Although a generation younger that the founders of the Isfahan School and Jong-e Isfahan, the publication of which lasted only until 1973, the author of Horse's Head should be considered one of the few surviving writers who have continued this tradition.
Born in 1954, Ja’far Modarres-Sadeqi spent his formative years in the city of his birth, Isfahan. He then moved to Tehran and studied at the College of Translation and the College of Literature and Foreign Languages. Using his fluency in English and his educational background, Modarres-Sadeqi familiarized himself with the literatures of other countries, especially Western literature, but of equal importance is his knowledge of Persian classical literature. His fictional work consists of several collections of short stories and novels, including Bachehha Bazi Nemikonand [Children Do Not Play], Davazdah Dastan [Twelve Stories], Namayesh [Show], Nakojaabad [Nowhereland], Balon-e Mahta [Mahta’s Baloon], Safar-e Kasra [Kasra’s Journey], and Sharik-e Jorm [Partner in Crime]. Together with Kalleh-ye Asb [Horse’s Head], the latter two novels form a trilogy published a decade after the Islamic Revolution. |
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