By Shokufa Azar - Translated by: Ghassan Hamdan
After the enthusiastic revolutionaries attacked Hoshanak's house and burned musical instruments, books, and all the things they considered forbidden, he decided to leave Tehran, taking his wife, Rosa, his two sons, Sohrab and Beta, and the third daughter, Bahar, to settle in a distant village, hoping Preserving their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the chaos of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution sweeping the country. The fates of all family members change, and they are divided between pain and memory, between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and the times, events, and narrative spaces that “Bahar” narrates intersect, mixing violence and brutality with mysticism, meditation, magic, and myths, invoking oral narrative traditions to confront cruelty with the power of imagination. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020, Green Plum Tree's Rise is a fascinating journey through Persian history and mythology, woven in the style of magical realism, exploring the fate of hope and dream in Iran today.
The period of writing these stories extended for many years, extending from 1987 with the story “The Smell” to 2013 with the story “May God prolong his life.” They were all written under the weight of heavy tyranny, which made our thinking almost paralyzed and made us free executioners and observers of ourselves. It is “natural” for most of them to be apologized for publishing, as happened with the story “The Smell” which was either apologized for publishing or was ignored by all the newspapers to which it was sent at that time, as well as It happened with several other stories. All the stories are united by a single concern and a similar atmosphere. Their events take place in the imperial atmosphere, with the meaning of the emperor’s word. The reader does not need effort or help from anyone in deciphering it. They speak of a general concern that everyone feels the burden of, without exception. Some were vocal about it at the times when the stories were written. Some people kept it quiet, but despite the fact that the majority were forced to remain silent, and those who opened their mouths paid a heavy price for not remaining silent, for everyone it was a heavy burden that a person could not get used to, or at the very least hope that it would go away. These stories were among the forms of expression of that general pain. Some of them were destined to come out to the screen - in some short periods of relief - to reach the audience, even in different formulations from the stories in the book, and some of them remained imprisoned until circumstances allowed them to appear on the pages of this book in your hands.
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