Laetitia Nanquette's Iranian Literature after the Islamic Revolution: Production and Circulation in Iran and the World is a meticulously researched, exhaustive study of the production and circulation of Iranian literature after the 1979 revolution. At the heart of the author's argument is what she identifies as a division in Iranian literary production and its reception between Iran and the diaspora. In her book, she offers a detailed exploration of the specific cultural conditions in which Iranian literature in Iran and in the diaspora is produced and circulated.
Nanquette is a literary scholar, but she tells us at the outset that she will not be engaging in close readings of texts; rather, her goal is to offer a comprehensive sociological study of Iranian literature published in Iran and in the diaspora. She deliberately foregoes literary analysis in favor of a broad view of the industry, although more granular textual analysis would have further enriched this important work.
The first half of the book presents a detailed examination of Iranian literature written, published, and circulated in Iran after the 1979 revolution, and the second half offers insightful analyses on the conditions of publication and circulation of Iranian literature in the diaspora. In the Iranian context, she examines the popularity of genres such as the romance novel and children's literature, as well as the notable absence of certain literary genres such as horror, crime fiction, and fantasy. Nanquette observes that the publishing constraints unique to postrevolutionary Iran divide writers and publishers into two tightly monitored political arenas: the independent and governmental sectors. She writes: “Governed by an authoritarian regime, Iran's literary field is based on opposition or adhesion to the state ideology on culture and is thus markedly different to western market-oriented models for book industries” (36). Whereas the genre of crime fiction, for instance, struggles to gain a foothold in the Iranian literary field due to its focus on the individual and its disruption of the established order (31–32), other genres such as the romance novel, which tends to reproduce traditional gender roles and patriarchal structures of power, are published without encountering much opposition from the government.
A popular genre unique to postrevolutionary Iran, and one that for obvious reasons does not travel well across Iran's borders, is the government-sanctioned genre of the “Sacred Defense Text,” which is “linked to a vast field of discourse on the Iran–Iraq war . . . and represents a foundation of the Islamic Republic as it organises the political (defence of the nation) and the religious (defence of Islam and of the Islamic Revolution)” (38). These texts tend to be written as life narratives or memoirs and “insist on values like self-sacrifice and martyrdom, Islamic fraternity and purity” (39). Nanquette's claim that the memoir genre is a popular one in this government-sanctioned category is noteworthy since it also has been, to date, one of the most popular genres among Iranian diasporic writers. The difference is that diasporic memoirs are inflected with strong anti-regime sentiment, whereas the government-sanctioned memoirs in Iran uphold (or at least work within) government restrictions and censorship. The fact that memoir writing, rare in the traditional Iranian context, is now a popular genre both inside and outside Iran is a fascinating development deserving of further exploration.
In her overview of the Iranian literary field, Nanquette elaborates on the divisions between the government-sanctioned and independent literary publishers in Iran, and on how the government sector has more political power and visibility, as evidenced by, among other things, the prominent location of their booths at the Tehran International Book Fair. The independent sector, on the other hand, has more cultural capital. In this section she also explores the long history of censorship in Iran, from prerevolutionary days to the present, which has led to the current situation where “writers, publishers, and translators have internalised the rules of what is morally and ideologically accepted and apply them” (87). Nanquette explains how censorship operates in a myriad of ways and draws attention to how the cultural conditions of censorship and book publication have shaped the field of Iranian literature, and indeed of Iranian culture.
The last chapter in part 1 of this book offers an interesting reflection on the popularity of children's literature as a genre, which Nanquette describes as “a success story” (139). For the postrevolutionary Iranian government, the child represents the future potential of a new Islamic citizen (146). Nanquette argues that this genre builds on an already established tradition of prerevolutionary Iranian children's literature, and receives significant government funding and support without being subject to the same oversight as other genres. The production of the books as well as their illustrations is of high quality, and this has led to greater success (in comparison to other genres) with global circulation. One wonders if there is a connection between the international success of Iranian films featuring child protagonists and the success of Iranian children's literature, but this question remains unanswered.
The second half of Nanquette's impressive study turns to a consideration of diasporic literary production, in which she claims that diasporic writers “deal with a crisis of legitimacy in Iran” (156). This statement reflects the heart of her argument about the distance between Iranian literature and literary criticism published in Iran and that published outside the country. Some of these gaps and divisions have to do, in Iran, with the particular difficulties of publishing in a political and cultural environment shaped by authoritarian control over what is permissible and what is not, and also by the challenges stories have crossing national borders. But this “crisis of legitimacy” also refers to the tensions between “inside” and “outside” and the obstacles faced by diasporic writers, whose location outside of Iran often subjects them to the scrutiny of other diasporic Iranians and Iranians inside Iran, both of whom question their cultural authenticity and political affiliations. Although Nanquette does not devote much time to this, it is an ongoing source of tension in Iranian studies, and one that Nanquette, who straddles both sides, would be well qualified to expand upon.
Throughout her book, Nanquette poses a number of questions. She asks how we can study the globalization of culture and cultural products of a country as politically and socially isolated as Iran. Reflecting on the reasons Iranian literary texts do not circulate as freely as other cultural media produced in Iran, such as Iranian cinema, visual art, and music, Nanquette suggests that the gap between writers in Iran and writers in the diaspora in part is related to the sanctions imposed by Western nations that have prevented the free flow of cultural and literary exchanges. It also is worth noting that Persian is not a global language like English, and therefore does not travel as well. As Nanquette observes in chapter 7, very few Persian-language texts are translated into English or French, and translators who take on this task do so with few rewards and little recognition. Furthermore, Nanquette proposes that diasporic literatures engage more substantially with what she calls the “local” or national literary traditions of their host countries, making their concerns less transnational or global. Diasporic Iranian literature finds itself more in conversation with concerns and issues in the adopted country than with issues in Iran, or with the issues with which diasporic Iranians in other nations contend. For example, she notes that the migratory patterns of Iranian-Australians differ both historically and politically from those of Iranian migrants to the US or France. There is a much longer history of Iranians in France, and so the concerns of Iranian exiles, or Iranians of the diaspora, in France tend to be markedly different from the more recent wave of Iranian migrants to Australia. Debates in the Australian context center around the refugee experience, with many Iranian Australian texts responding to this issue.
One of the most rewarding aspects of Nanquette's work is her engagement with literary and critical works both in Iran and in the diaspora. Her monograph engages both the diaspora and domestic Iran by drawing on a wide range of scholars and scholarship, and in doing so offers a model of how to bridge the current divide. The result is an innovative approach to the study of Iranian and Iranian diasporic literature, admirable in its scope and breadth, and generous in its commitment to placing a wide-ranging list of writers and scholars in conversation with each other.
