ABSTRACT
Focusing on circulations of texts and films across national borders, this chapter addresses moments of transfictionality and transmediality as they present the interactions between Iran and the US. Studying the selected works of Simin Daneshvar, Shahriar Mandanipour, and Don DeLillo reveals the bad misunderstanding between the two nations rooted in the formation and consequences of orientalism and the East–West dichotomy. While such an arbitrary “oriental image” has prevented Americans from seeing the reality behind their relations with Iranians, and also prevented Iranians from grasping the truth behind American intervention in their politics, a cultural affinity is still traceable in these authors’ literary works. This chapter concludes that they are the storytellers of One Thousand and One Nights, not based on any “orientalist” discourse but rather, based on their narrating their own stories in a way that is truthful to their respective countries and to the sociocultural transformations they have undergone at the point of contact or confrontation with other cultures.
