Shahriar Mandanipour
(Shiraz, Iran, 1956) is one of the most successful Iranian writers of today. His work, which consists of essays, children's books, travelogues, novels and film reviews, has been awarded many times. In 2009 a novel of his appeared in translation for the first time, Censuring an Iranian Love Story, which was received with a lot of acclaim by the international press. The main character is the writer Shahriar who decides to write a love story on Sara and Dara, the Romeo and Juliette of Islamic Iran. Their love and the writing process are frustrated by the severe moral and censorship laws in Iran. Mandanipour has had an eventful life. In the 1970s he joined the demonstrations against the sjah and in the 1980s he fought in the war against Iraq. He risked his neck as editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Asr-e Panjshanbeh (Thursday night), founded in 1999 and banned in 2007. Today Mandanipour lives in exile in Cambridge and lectures at Harvard University.
(WIN2010)Share this page
Archive available for: Shahriar Mandanipour
-
Decisive rules
Whether literature offers solace or confusion, whether it shows the way or disorders, every writer must have been moved in the course of his or her life by a passage, a line, an image or a poem which gave direction to his or her life. Was it a boys' book? A text on a tile? A column? Or rather that highly valued, often quoted passage from world literature? Jonathan Safran Foer, Tash Aw, Ramsey Nasr, Joke van Leeuwen and Petina Gappah read those passages that changed their lives for good, and reveal what happened to them when they read those lines for the first time. The programme starts with a reading from his work by the Iranian author Shahriar Mandanipour.
In English -
In search of the Golden Rule III
What if you have to work in a country that puts you under all kinds of legal restrictions? Shahriar Mandanipour, expelled from Iran, wrote about the censorship that he had to deal with as a writer. Xue Xinran worked as a radio journalist in China from 1980, until she moved to London in 1997. She wrote books in which she gives a voice to the memories of Mao's contemporaries; people who still find it hard to tell openly about his matter. What to do as a writer if you have to work under circumstances that make it difficult or even impossible to write what you want? Is there a Golden Rule that guides you through this, a principle? Host: Markha Valenta. In English.
