Author: Fariba Hachtroudi Translator: Sian Robyns ISBN: 978-1-926780-05-4 Synopsis In this novel, Fariba Hachtroudi returns to Iran, after 30 years of exile to take the country’s pulse. She paints a picture which is surrealist, magical and darkly funny – but also appalling. Black humour makes her pen a redoubtable weapon. Her heroine and narrator, Anahita, is a journalist living in Teheran, thirty years old, the same age as the Iranian revolution. She is sent to report on the pilgrimage to Jamkaran: a centre of beliefs and superstitions from another age. The focus of her enquiry is the mosque’s well – supposed to be the hiding place of the Twelfth Imam whose return the Shiites eagerly await. And to her surprise, the young woman discovers that in a country where women are stoned, where machoism holds sway, the famous Imam is... an Imamess and a feminist. The colourful, blackly funny narrative blends wit with anger, satire with rage, while the vivid depiction of young Iranians’ lives is also a call for political action. The novel also provides a key to understanding the current situation in Iran, a country in the grip of a millenarian culture where Shia Islam has been a force of resistance against foreign invasion as well as powerful weapon in the hands of some of the region’s most repressive despots.
Born in Tehran in 1951, resident in France since 1964, Fariba Hachtroudi is the daughter of a leading Iranian intellectual. She is an archaeologist by training, a longtime human rights activist (president of the Mohsen Hachtroudi Association), freelance journalist, writer and novelist. Her novel Iran, les rives du Sang, won the French Human Rights Prize for Literature in 2000. The Twelfth Imam's a Woman? is the first of her novels to be translated into English.
Sian Robyns has worked as a journalist and a communications consultant in parliamentary politics and central government. She is currently a post-graduate student in literary translation studies. The Twelfth Imam’s a Woman? is her first translation.
ReviewsIn her new book, The Twelfth Imam’s a Woman? ... Fariba Hachtroudi evokes the coming of the Muslim Messiah. And what a surprise, this saviour of humanity proves to be a woman! In this sometimes hilarious novel, the French-Iranian journalist describes the secrets of the Iranian powers that be, with an unabashed feminism. She also conveys her faith in the future, in Persian culture, and in women, who for her will be a driving force in establishing democracy in Iran.Femmes Universelles, 2010
On the spiritual sickness the author calls ‘imamism’, on the infantile myth that the twelfth imamis about to return to set Iran and the world ablaze, on the poison of fanaticism symbolised by the non-elected president of Iran, on the charlatans who surround him, on the atmosphere worthy of Ubu which reigns at Qom and Jamkaran, these days you won’t read anything cheekier, wittier or more farfetched, and therefore more effective. The Art of Farce applied to ideological warfare. Bernard-Henry Lévy, Le Point, May 2010
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