Identity card [Unknown Binding]

F. M Esfandiary (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1968

In a narrative where tragedy begs to be masked by comedy, F.M. Esfandiary conveys the consequences and realities of Iranian life. In an attempt to flee the underdeveloped, bureaucratic country, a Middle Easterner searches for every possible way to obtain an identity card that will allow him to leave Iran. In this comic masterpiece we follow this alienated man on a journey to freedom against the backdrop of a society dominated by ceremonious formalities, politeness, responsibility and confusion. Iranian-born Esfandiary further develops the themes and ideas of his first two novels, one of which has been required reading for the American Foreign Service, as he sheds light on a culture and a lifestyle that are a mystery to many.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 236 pages
• Publisher: Dent (1968)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0460038435
• ISBN-13: 978-0460038430
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,311,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Kafka hits the Land of Khayyam", July 5, 2001

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Identity card

In ancient times, exile was reserved for a few unfortunates, often intellectuals who had disturbed the powers that were. One thinks of Chinese poets or Roman philosophers. Jews and Armenians were rare among peoples in being made up chiefly of exiles. Siberia and Australia were once populated by exiled offenders of many kinds. Yet it is our own age in which exile has become a widespread condition. This is the era of refugees, immigrants, alienation and discontent. The condition of being at home nowhere is very much one of our days.

Though I know almost nothing about him, F.M. Esfandiary must have been one such person, an Iranian used to the ways of the West and its greater personal freedoms, still feeling an outsider there, but alienated from the traditions and political climate of his homeland. IDENTITY CARD is thus an autobiographical novel to some considerable extent. A Westernized Iranian returns to Teheran after many years abroad. He needs an identity card to leave the country again, but he has unfortunately lost his. We have a Kafkaesque trek from office to office, with stops at various upper class parties and family dinners; we have a powerful sense of alienation and open dislike of the Shah, the Iranian political charades of the 1960s, and of the particular brand of social politesse current in Iran then. Iran draws the protagonist, like the pliant lower-class woman he dallies with, but he no longer understands her---woman/Iran---though he may think he does. Esfandiary criticizes Iran harshly for not being what he wishes it to be. The West, on the other hand, is never criticized. As a novel of Iran, then, IDENTITY CARD is highly suspect. The author exposes the weaknesses of Iranian society, but never considers if all societies do not have inherent weaknesses. Iran is guilty of corruption and authoritarianism. Iranian poetry has turned shallow, Iran's officials are lazy and insincere, the Shah and his circle hogging the country's resources. While this background earned him the enmity of the Shah's regime and meant that the manuscript had to be smuggled out of the country, the real theme of the novel can be found on pages 169-70. "The gulf between him and his countrymen had widened irreparably, and although at times he felt an indefinable closeness to some of them....most of the time he felt he was an island that had been torn away from the mainland..... He had outgrown his homeland, he had passed it by. He had matured faster than his country had progressed and therefore he could never live on equal terms...with his countrymen." You feel Esfandiary's love and hate of Iran on every page. His personal ambivalence is much stronger than the actual story.

I found this novel fascinating. It echoes with the pain of exile, of the people who are no longer at home anywhere. It gives a picture of Iranian society in the 1960s, albeit one-sided. And on a broader plane, it is one of many novels published from the so-called Third World that portray the dilemmas of modernization in more graphic form than a shelf full of academic treatises. IDENTITY CARD may not be `great literature' but it is an important book nevertheless. I recommend it.