ABSTRACT
The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) had a direct and substantial impact on the thematic development of Persian literature. It was during this war that, for the first time, the term “war novel” was introduced to define the Persian prose genre recounting events of the war and the issues raised by them, regardless of the extent to which the war served as a setting. This chapter sheds light on the rise and evolution of Persian novels of the Iran–Iraq War by first dividing them into wartime and postwar novels and then examining their specific characteristics through an analysis of their narrative elements (such as plot, theme, characters, and setting). It explores the ways in which authors reconciled their experience of the war with the state’s official war narrative and furthermore discusses the “governmentalization” of the war novel genre, which directly impacted the processes of production, publication, and circulation of these novels in Iran. Although most wartime novels – with the exception of Ahmad Mahmud’s Zamin-e Sukhteh and Esmā‘il Fasih’s Zemestān-e 62 – were commissioned and used as mobilizing tools to persuade men to join the army, in the postwar period came another kind of novel – the anti-war novel (romān-hā-ye zedd-e jang) – wherein authors expressed their anxieties about the devastating effects of the war on Iranian civilians and the ensuing poverty, insecurity, and forced migration that resulted from the long-term conflict. By offering an exploration of the chronological and thematic development of Persian novels during the Iran–Iraq War, this chapter illustrates their position within the body of Iranian contemporary literature.
