Author: Shahrnūsh Pārsīʹpūr

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781568593876

""Blue Logos" is the second major work of prominent Iranian writer, Shahrnush Parsipur, to be published in an English translation. In this a magical tale, Parsipur engages the reader in Western and Eastern philosophy, art, literature, mythology, fairytales, and music, from China and Mongolia to the Middle East, and from India to Europe and the New World. With her narrator, we travel throughout history, from the past to the present and future, and aided by her imagination, we go to the depth of the earth and soar the heavens and beyond. Parsipur's narrator is akin to Scheherazade of "One Thousand and One Nights." "Blue Logos" is a tale of tales that is not merely intended to entertain, but also to entice. Within the first pages of this novel, readers familiar with recent Iranian history will soon identify the time and circumstances of the frame story as merely a few years after the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79 in Iran, in the late 1980s when, after having launched a military invasion of the southern part of Iran in 1981, Iraq started aerial bombings of the capital city of Tehran, which caused heavy destruction and casualties. It is also a time when the Islamic regime has imposed dress and other restrictions, especially on women. In that atmosphere, the anti-Western, in particular anti-American, propaganda by the Islamic regime also caused an unprecedented number of Iranians, mostly the educated and those affluent enough to be able to afford it, to flee the country and emigrate, mostly to Europe and the United States. Although the frame story has a simple plot, it is the stories within the frame that present us with rather complex and at times puzzling pictures. In the frame story, an unnamed woman visits a police captain on five different nights, discussing a variety of topics. The journeys in time and place occur within those nocturnal discussions, each beginning on a relatively realistic level and continuing more and more on surrealistic and even fantastical plains. In the course of each journey, readers find frequent allusions to Persian art, literature, philosophy, history, and mythology, as well as those of other cultures. In this respect, Blue Logos can be described as a compendium of allusions, the author's personal tribute to all cultures and creative minds"--