Interactions Between Iranian and American Literatures

Strange Affinity

Naghmeh Esmaeilpour

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032449609
• eBook ISBN: 9781040010341
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature
• Index: Literature

Introducing "narrative mobility" as a new approach in comparative studies of Iran and the US, this book reinterprets the politics and aesthetics of relations between the nations through an analysis of Iranian and American authors.

The book focuses specifically on three authors—Simin Daneshvar, Shahriar Mandanipour, and Don DeLillo—who each employ narrative mobility to rethink intercultural negotiation, addressing parallel issues in America and Iran from different, but complementary, perspectives. The book analyzes the employment of parallel narrational techniques, presenting physically and virtually mobile characters who embody their respective countries as they move from one culture to another. The strange affinity between Iran and the US is ultimately revealed by viewing literary works as a "contact zone" through which the complicated relations and shared history of the two nations can be renegotiated. On a more theoretical level, the book reflects on the role of literature—in particular the novel as a transnational medium—as a bridge between nations in a period of globalization.

With its focus on cross-cultural connections, the book will be of interest to anyone studying or researching comparative literature, US–Iran relations, and cultural studies generally.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1 At the Entrance to the Story
• 2 Narrative Mobility: Exchange across the Borders of Nations and Cultures
• 3 Physical Mobility as the Circulation of People from Different Worlds
• 4 The Otherworld of What Was Known and Lost (Historia-Political Narrative and Virtual/Imaginative Mobility)
• 5 The Storytellers of One Thousand and One Nights (Cultural Narrative and Virtual/Imaginative Mobility)
• 6 The Vulgar Face of a Lost System (Economic Narrative and Virtual/Imaginative Mobility)
• 7 Strange Affinity: The Historical Irony of a Cultural Circulation between Iran and the US
• Index