The Novel in Contemporary Iran: A Sociological Reading of Selected Contemporary Persian Novels

Abstract

In this article, the status of the Persian novel has been investigated via an interdisciplinary approach during the last hundred years. The research starts with the emergence of the Persian novel and continues up to the 2010s/1390s A.H., and it looks into the selected novels from a sociological outlook, i.e., studying literature within its social, cultural, political and historical context. The introduction of modernism into the Iranian society paved the way for the advent of this newly emerging type of literature in Persian literary tradition. Moreover, changes in the political and social structure of the Iranian society led to the establishment and the formation of various periods in the history of the Persian novel. Besides, communication with the modern world and accordingly familiarity with modern world literature through translation had also a considerable role in this process of transformation. To support the claims made in this research, examples will be presented from different novels written during the aforementioned period.

Keywords

• persian novel
• periodization
• modernity
• socio-political context of iran
• translation