“… It could be said that The Princess of the Land of Eternity is a modern allegory created by the mind of a modern writer who tries to say that we are all Sysiphes who each time we reach the top or bottom of the mountain, we have to change our place with another Sysiphe, althogh the stone remains the same.”
Farhad Babaii, Sokhan Literary Website. Read the rest (Persian)
The author takes the reader along his labyrinth of stories, like 1001 Nights [Arabian Nights], to prove that all the loves are the same, there is only one woman and one man, and the world is repeating itself endless, and without getting bored.
The censorship by the “Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance” of Iran is crushing us. Today is the inauguration day of Obama, the first African American President of the United States of America. Exactly 40 years ago, in 1968, a man who had this dream was assasinated because he believed that this dream was possible. 45 years ago, before the Act of Civil rights was signed by Johnson, due to the efforts of Martin Luther King, the Africa-American’s did not have the right to vote.
Is there any hope for us?
I believe so. But is this hope strong enough to keep us struggling in a path that seems to be closed? I don’t know. What I know is that the current situation is destroying the Iranina publishing industry NOW. Whatever hope there is for a reform, we should cross our fingers that the change doesn’t come too late, when we would have to rebuild everything from scratch.
Right now, in Caravan Books, we have 25 titles in the process of being read by the censor officers; the average time since they have been submitted: 18 months. Only this year, 10 other of our new titles were censored completely and labled as: “They don’t deserve to be published”. We have been able to publish only 17 new books, about 40% of what we published 4 years ago. The ministry of culture has also started to cancell the previous permissions granted already, blocking our way to reprint the books.
In june this year, the ministry of culture even cancelled our licence to publish our cultural and Literary quarterly, Book Fiesta, which we had been publishing for 5 years. The reason, “Lilith”, a short story by Primo Levi that we had published in our last issue. We are not even allowed to appeal.
The main concern of the government regarding the book industry, seems to be translated fiction.
I really hope that the situation changes soon, not in 40 years.
The author [of the Princess of the Land of Eternity] knows how to write a good story, he chooses the words wisely, he puts the scenes together with utmost preci-sion, he introduces the characters skillfully, he uses appropriate suspense and all the tools for hooking up the reader to read every page. This novel is a strong, and beautiful story…
read the rest (Persian), Hamshahri Newspaper, 2003
It seems somehow strange that despite all these problems, Iranian publishing industry is relatively large. There are over 8000 publishers registered, from which about 1200 publishers publish more than 10 titles a year. Every year, according to the reports published by Iran’s Book House (www.ketab.net), more than 18000 new titles enter the market, which consists mainly of bookstores (about 1500 bookstores), most of them independents. We don’t have chain bookstores that are the most important part of distribution system in most countries.
“The international publishers can hardly understand this,” I think, while I am on the Lufthansa flight back home. And the hardest thing to understand is that Iranians actually read a lot. Bestsellers are very important among the international publishers I meet, but what are bestsellers? It seems to me that there is another gap between our worlds, as except for Paulo Coelho and Harry Potter series that seem to be universal bestsellers, most of the international bestsellers don’t work in Iran, neither Stephen King, nor John Grisham, Dan Brown, Daniel Steel, or Mitch Albom. The bestsellers in the Iranian book market quite differ from the other parts of the world: Milan Kundera, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Mario Vargas Llosa, Nietzsche, Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Auster, Jose Saramago; these are some of the bestsellers in Iran.
Coming from a nation which is proud to have produced one of the most ancient books in history (Avesta by the Persian prophet Zarathustra), and coming from a religious background where god swears By the pen and whatever they record[1], it is naturally hard to believe that our government is one of the few States left in the modern world and digital age, that officially censors books. While international publishers hurry from an appointment to another to raise the profits, we shiver when deciding to publish a book: “Will they let us publish this at all?”
Our constitution doesn’t clearly recognize the freedom of expression: ‘the press is free to express their opinion, unless it is against the foundation of Islam or rights of the people, and the law will explain the details”. (clause 24, The Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran).
And the details have never been explained, except in an act issued by the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution (which is not a law, as it is not legislated by the Parliament), which states the subjects that “do not deserve to be published”, for example: Renouncing the fundamentals of religion; promoting moral corruption; inviting the society to riot against the State of Islamic Republic of Iran; promoting the ideas of terrorist and illegal groups and corrupted sects and defending monarchy; stimulating conflicts between the various ethnic or religious groups or creating problems in the unity of the society and the country; mocking and weakening the national proud and nationalistic spirit, and creating an atmosphere of loosing national values to the culture and civilization of western or eastern colonizing systems.[2]
Well, these are the guidelines that the “Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance” has been following in issuing permissions to publish books in the past 20 years. Unfortunately almost anything can be interpreted to be violating one of these red lines, especially when it comes to “moral corruption” and “loosing values”, for which no one can give a concrete definition.
Publishers have to submit their books to the ministry before they publish it, so there is no juridical way for objection to the decision of a censor, or let the common sense judge the health of the book published. There is a gigantic bureaucratic system – by the expense of Iranian national treasury — of prior restraint installed based on the act above: Publishers have to get the books translated, typeset, edited, laid out, even proofread, before they can submit the books to the ministry. Then the censors read the books. If they find no problems, they issue a permission to publish, if they find some problems, they write the problems to be cut out – on a piece of paper with neither a letterhead nor a signature – and the publisher has to make the changes and resubmit the book. If they decide that the book does not “deserve to be published” at all, they declare their decision to the publisher orally, no written document. And the worst problem is, it all depends on the taste and individual interpretation of the persons who read the copy in the ministry of culture, whose names no one knows.
With the official permission, the publisher can proceed producing the book. But after binding, the book must be submitted again to the ministry, so that they can check whether all the changes and omissions have been actually applied and only then, a Permission to Distribute – officially named Declaration of Receiving the Book – will be granted. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that the book can be reprinted. When the government of President Khatami finished its term and President Ahmadinezhad took office, they declared that thousands of corrupted books had been authorized by Khatami’s Minister of Culture, and so they cancelled the permissions to publish for hundreds of titles in only one year, which pushed many publishers to the verge of bankruptcy.
Every time in Frankfurt, I see people anxious, running from one appointment to another, eager to do their business, to find a place in the publishing world that is bravely resisting against the danger of extinction. “What are they hurrying to do?” was my first impression the first time I went to Frankfurt, and it didn’t take me long to find an answer: buy and sell rights, the most important business happening in most of the major book fairs, something that has never been much of a business for Iranian publishers, as Iran recognizes no international copyright agreement, being one of the few countries left, who are not members of the Bern Convention, WTO, World Copyright agreement, or any other convention that oblige publishers to acquire the rights for a book published outside Iran before translating or publishing it. That is why we have at least 12 editions of Harry Potter, 5 editions of One hundred Years of Solitude, and even 4 translations of Kafka on the Shore in Iranian bookstores, without a dime paid to the author. Of course there are a few publishers that individually respect copyright and try to acquire the rights of a book, but this will not legally stop the other publishers from publishing the same title with another translation, and the publishers who actually pay royalties, have a problem with pricing the books, as it doesn’t matter how hard they try, they can not compete with the price of the unauthorized editions of the same books. The government of Iran has been claiming for many years that Iran is planning to join the Bern Convention, but during the past ten years, I have not actually seen a real effort made.
That is why most of the publishers consider us, Iranian publishers, to be pirates, and explaining the situation doesn’t help much, except for a few brave agents, publishers and authors who risk being published in Iran with a low royalty or no advance payments, most of them actually don’t believe that we are telling the truth.
Copyright is a major line that divides our worlds, but it is not the most important one.
A hand shakes me. I open my eyes wearily. It is our lovely flight attendant of the gigantic Lufthansa plane.
“We are preparing to land sir,” she says, “please return the back of your seat to the upright position, and fasten your seatbelt.”
I try to move clumsily.
“Sir, would you like a drink before we land?” While drinking my water, I close my eyes and listen to the report given by the pilot, about the weather in Frankfurt – most of the times well in October – and how he wishes that we had a nice flight and hopes to see us soon on board again. A wish that will be granted soon, since after five fays, I will be flying back on the same flight, this time our destination would be Tehran, my homeland.
The Frankfurt Book Fair has always been a celebration of the year for me. I have some business there, but my main motivation to visit the book fair every year has never been the business itself, but my intensive crave to be there. In an atmosphere where everybody thinks about books, lives the books, breaths the books, sleeps them; thinks about something no longer considered to be a practical necessity in our modern world and the age of information. It is only five days, but so fulfilling, so inspiring, and the most intense part for me is seeing my friends, editors and publishers from all over the world, with the sad, or perhaps not sad, but somehow strange feeling, that although we are friends, although we all live by books, there is a deep gap between their world and mine, having concerns that no one believes, facing quite a different ordeal as a publisher and editor.
Although translation plays an important role in Iranian book market, the local authors are very significant among the Persian readership. Contemporary classics such as Sadeq Hedayat (although completely forbidden since the Ahmadinezhad administration), Mahmood Dolatabadi, Sadeq Choobak, Hooshang Golshiri and the others are read with huge popularity among Iranians. The new generation of Iranian authors, not widely translated yet, are facing the dilemma of reconciling the creative process and the censorship, which seems almost impossible and has resulted in a lot of cheap literature, but in a few cases – by the laws of Necessity is the mother of invention and Practice makes perfect – has resulted in the creation of new voices and styles – especially by female authors – which seems to be most appealing to the readers. I sometimes refer to this new trend in Persian Literature as “return to the source”, as it seems to me that the Iranian authors are returning to the world wide known tradition of storytelling of their ancestors, Rumi, Firdowsy and Khayam and the authors of 1001 nights, more being said with less words, believing that what you see is not what you get, and creating huge intratextuality and mysteries. Authors like Shahrnoosh Parsipoor, Mohammad-Reza Kateb, and Mohammad Mohammad-Ali and some others are the highlights.
Perhaps we have to make a bridge, the publishers from many parts of the world can learn from us how to survive, despite all the problems that may seem coming out of a book by George Orwell, far away from the problems of bestsellers and profits. We can learn some business from them.
This is why I always fly to Frankfurt in October.
