What can a writer write about when his or her source of inspiration, the reality of his or her memories and the everyday life screams to be revealed the way it is, without any fictional projection and game of imagination? Is there something like a moral obligation of the writer to depict such a reality in the most realistic ways as a manifest against the cruelty and injustice?
Iranian-born but living in France as a political refugee for decades, Chahdortt Djavann has a voice which can be deeply ironic that makes you laugh so hard until you cannot stop from crying. Her latest book, which I´ve read in the original French version, is inspired at a great extent from her personal experience of her first decades of life living in an Iran overwhelmed by the suffocating fist of the religious establishment. Until the last chapter which is a revenge of the imagination against the hopeless reality.
Djavann writes with passion, that passion that only someone who hates being uprooted can have. A hate for those men who are able to decide randomly the worth of a woman. Those men who can greedily enjoy the fruits of the day while women are harassed and dehumanised, turned into disgraseful objects of their lust. Disposable bodies whose fault is for not being anatomically the same with their men counterparts.
The freedom of playing with the temporal slots as well as the satisfaction of killing its main ugly characters are such beautiful games of mirrors. I am not sure which part I´ve liked the most, but maybe in fact there is a balance between those rough facts that one watching Europe-based Iranian media outlets is easily familiar with and the carnal desire of ending up the circus and the revenge for all those women targeted by the religious establishment.
I enjoyed both the political - unfortunatelly, very real - content and the art of the fiction. I only want to read more by Djavann to be able to make myself a better idea about her art of the writer.
Rating: 3 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment