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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I am the translator of this book and this is my afterword:, November 13, 1998
By A Customer
Shokooh Mirzadegi is one of the finest contemporary Iranian writers the Islamic Republic has successfully managed to force into exile. Although some of Mirzadegi's short stories and plays have already appeared in English and French, this is her first novel translated into English. Nevertheless, this single book suffices to show the extent of loss suffered by the literary milieu inside Iran due to the mass exodus of Iranian literary figures after the advent of the 1979 revolution. The only conciliatory fact is that such books, despite their being banned by the Islamic regime, have been smuggled into Iran and have been heavily copied and read, specially by young readers. Shokooh Mirzadegi was born in 1944. She was married at the age of sixteen and gave birth to two daughters. Later, she studied child psychology at Tehran Teachers University. I remember her first visit to our office of the literary Iranian magazine, Ferdowsi, in an evening of 1967 in Tehran, escorted by her then husband who introduced her as a potential writer. He wanted her to use her married name. She soon became a member writer of our magazine and began to publish short stories and poems. She also published in other Persian language magazines and newspapers. Her first collection of short stories, called "Permanent Restlessness," was published in book form in 1972. A year later, I, along with many of our friends, was shocked to read in the Iranian evening newspapers that she was arrested, along with several other Iranian writers, musicians and filmmakers, charged with conspiring against the monarchy. The government prosecutor asked for her execution by firing squad. She was imprisoned for two years and her saga ended only when she, along with other imprisoned writers, agreed to appear on Iranian television and apologize for their deeds. Two of the inmates-a poet and a writer-who refused to do so were executed. Once out of the prison, she divorced her husband and began a period of rehabilitation. It took her more than two years to recover from her bitter experience and to begin publishing again, this time under her own surname. She The very self-explanatory title of her new collection of short stories was "The Second Beginning." During the next two years, she wrote two plays-"I Run, So I Am" and "Prisoner of the Year 2000" whose stagings were banned; published three story books for children; and a wrote a travel account of her trip to Mecca entitled: "The Struggles of Hagar." While the former titles clearly show their political connotations, the latter is the beginning of her serious involvement in the women's rights movement and her writings as a feminist. She was permitted to leave to the West at the end of 1977. She returned to Iran a year later, just before the ousting of the monarchy. This time she was arrested by the Islamic government, this time charged with collaborating with the Shah's regime. Fortunately, her story was published and under the pressure of the United Nations human rights commissioner, she was released after a month. She immediately began her journalistic activities and her daily column in Bamdad newspaper became very popular. This could not last for long. The newspaper and her column were banned and she decided to fly to England, where her two daughters were attending school. Once settled in London, she embarked on the publication of Mamnu'eha (Forbidden Works)-a literary magazine sponsored by the famous Iranian humorist, Manouchehr Mahjoubi. Its title denoted its contents. A year later, she published one of the first post-revolution political magazines outside Iran called Moghavemat (Resistance). It was in this magazine that she invited me to join her as a writer-poet and our friendship was resumed. In 1984, she decided to dedicate her time to her literary and social writings and separate herself from direct political involvement. She was one of the first Iranian writers who joined me and a few others to establish the "Society of Iranian Writers and Artists in Britain." Then, in 1989, Shokooh and I decided to publish a cultural periodical called Puyeshgaran (The Dynamists) with the aim of promoting that modern Persian literary and artistic trend which was taking shape outside Iran, despite the wishes of the Islamic regime. It was in Puyeshgaran that she began to publish her new short stories. They were immediately recognized as fine works of imagination and literary craftsmanship. At the same time she was working on her first novel, the English translation of which is now in front of you. We were married in January 1990 in London. She finished her novel three years later and called it Biganeh-yi dar Man. It was an immediate success. The first print sold out within five months. It won two literary prizes: "Sepas" in London and "Baran" in Stockholm. The judges for both prizes were chosen from amongst the best literary critics and writers outside Iran. They declared the book as "The Best Persian Novel of 1993." The work went through a second printing in 1994 and again soon sold out in eight months. The third print has appeared in Iranian bookshops since May 1996. I was the first reader of the book which Shokooh has kindly dedicated it to me. Once I finished the book, I was very impressed by its richness and intriguing structure and, seeing its potential appeal to a wider international readership, I decided to translate into English. This coincided with our move from London. In May 1994, we immigrated to the United States and settled in Denver, Colorado. I then finished the translation and handed it to editors at the end of 1995. Although I have almost finished the chronology of the author's life, there is still one point which I feel obliged to disclose to the reader. Presently the English title of the book is That Stranger within Me. I am not happy with the word "stranger" which is standing for the word "biganeh" in the original Persian title of the book. My original translation of the title was That Alien in Me. But, the editors and the publisher of the book, rightly, found my version more suitable for a science-fiction book rather than a fictional and realistically narrated story of a foreign woman caught in the web of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution. To me, it is an unfortunate fact that the usage of the word "alien" has gradually become delimited to creatures from outer space. People even tend to forget that holders of green cards in the United States are known as "Alien Residents." In fact, anyone coming from another culture could be called an "alien" by the citizens of the host society. We should not forget that, etymologically speaking, `lien' means all your belongings, mostly in the shape of landed properties, which connect you to a certain geographical location. And "alien" is someone who loses this connection. Thus, Immigrants and foreigners are not "strangers." They are "aliens" coming not from outer space but from lands far apart and far different from here and now. Although Shokooh Mirzadegi never tells us who this alien is in her novel, we definitely come to recognize that her alien could not be a stranger who abodes in the conscious and/or subconscious mind of the novel's narrator. In fact, this dilemma between ambiguity and clearness is the celebrated outcome of an implicit style used for narrating a very complicated plot with several interesting and, at times, unforgettable characters. It the result of a deliberate and masterly-produced mixture of a series of subjective and objective observations, revealing a chaotic, ancient and fragile world on the brink of a fundamental revolution which is designed to take it back in history and time. The ensuing events are to change drastically the destiny of the novel's narrator, as well as that of all contemporary Iranians. To me, this book is about alienation in that variegated and multidimensional meaning of the word and I still would like to call it An Alien in Me. By now, the reader should have guessed that I love this book and its writer.
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