Recent events only strengthen her position as a writer deserving a wider audience.' (USA Today) 'Daneshvar lovingly details the old Persian customs and way of life. Her compassionate vision of traditional folk ways surviving amid the threats of modernity (including Allied occupation) give her work a resonant universality. 'An engrossing chronicle of life in Persia-just-turned-Iran by Simin Daneshvar. The original Persian edition of Savushun has sold over half a million copies. Although written prior to the Islamic Revolution, it brilliantly portrays the social and historical forces that gave pre-revolutionary Iran its characteristic hopelessness and emerging desperation so inadequately understood by outsiders. While Savushun is a unique piece of literature that transcends the boundaries of the historical community in which it was written, it is also the best single work for understanding modern Iran. Within basic Iranian paradigms, the characters play out the roles inherent in their personalities. Daneshvar's style is both sensitive and imaginative, while following cultural themes and metaphors. The story is seen through the eyes of Zari, a young wife and mother, who copes with her idealistic and uncompromising husband while struggling with her desire for traditional family life and her need for individual identity. It is set in Shiraz, a town which evokes images of Persepolis and pre-Islamic monuments, the great poets, the shrines, Sufis, and nomadic tribes within a historical web of the interests, privilege and influence of foreign powers corruption, incompetence and arrogance of persons in authority the paternalistic landowner-peasant relationship tribalism and the fear of famine. Savushun chronicles the life of a Persian family during the Allied occupation of Iran during World War II.

Savushun by simin daneshvar