I turn out the lights

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“Abadan, City of Oil”, 1960 view

I turn off the lights , 2001 in the original Persian چراغ ها را من خاموش می کنم, is a social comedy directed by Zoya Pirzad , which was a bestseller in Iran that same year . It is the second novel by the Armenian-Iranian author who had previously published short stories. The literary influences include above all Jane Austen and Anton Chekhov .

The action takes place in the early 1960s, before the Islamic Revolution . For Iranian women in this novel, it is natural to "wear lipstick, go to the movies, go to clubs and bookstores with Western literature on the street."

Content and interpretation

Abadan Oil Refinery, 1970

Clarisse is in her late 30s and lives in a center of the oil industry in the desolate Iranian south. For economic reasons, in addition to Clarisse, Violet, Alice, Nina and Sophie have also left the cities of Tehran, Isfahan or Tabris and come together in Abadan , in a "special kind of survival community."

Clarisse is married to a communist activist and engineer and has three children. Two of them are lively twin girls at the age of nine, whose lively, jumbled conversation reveals many details. One day a new family without a mother moves into the neighborhood. Clarisse's life changes with her love for her new neighbor, who is a sensitive widower. But her sister is also interested in him. Clarisse goes through an inner crisis that her own family also feels. But everything seems to stay the same. As a fixed point in a universe full of everyday turbulence, Clarisse comments on her role in a self-reflective way when she ponders “whether she should face the respective situations with her optimistic, pessimistic or nagging side.” Different constellations in political debates round off the memorial that the author of this group holds of families in the numerically manageable Armenian minority, about which one can rarely read in Iranian novels.

In a 2009 interview, Zoya Pirzad says, in The Lights Out, I feel life is rather sluggish, because Abadan was a very quiet city in the 1960s. Pirzad himself grew up in Abadan.

reception

The normal absurdity of everyday life is not glossed over, but it is told with fantasy and tension, atmospherically fine and full of details. While reading, the reader can hardly forget that behind the fictional country with an oil industry the reality of the Islamic Republic of Iran dawns, says Sybill Mahlke in her review for the Tagesspiegel . In her review for Die Welt , Tanja Langer writes that a moment in Iranian history is described "- but as if it were about today."

Awards

expenditure

  • چراغ ها را من خاموش می کنم ( Čirāġhā rā man ḫāmūš mīkunam ), Našr-i Markaz, Tihrān 1381 h.š. [2001/2003], ISBN 964-305-656-2
  • Things We Left Unsaid , Oneworld Publications, London 2002, ISBN 9781851689675
    • (E-Book) Things We Left Unsaid , translated by Franklin Dean Lewis, Oneworld Publications, London 2012, ISBN 9781780740843
  • I turn out the lights. Novel , from Persian by Susanne Baghestani, Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-458-17293-9
  • C'est moi qui éteins les lumières ( Čerāġ-hā rā man h̲āmōš mi-konam ), translated by Christophe Balaÿ, Zulma, Paris 2011, ISBN 9782843045561

Reviews in German

Research literature

  • Elham Gheytanchi: I Will Turn off the Lights: The Allure of Marginality in Postrevolutionary Iran. In: Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East , Volume 27, No. 1, 2007, pp. 173-185.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tanja Langer: “Crossing the red line. Zoya Pirzad tells a quiet story from everyday Iranian life in her novel The Lights, "in: Die Welt , April 22, 2006, LITERARISCHE-WELT, p. 4
  2. ↑ Zoya Pirzad in a video interview, C'est moi qui éteins les lumières , dailymotion.com , 2011 (when the French translation came out), mostly in English.
  3. ↑ a b Sybill Mahlke: " Fernes Land ", in: Der Tagesspiegel , March 15, 2006
  4. ↑ a b c d Barbara Wahlster: “ Humorous from Iran. Social comedy from before the mullahs ”, in: Deutschlandradio Kultur , February 14, 2006
  5. ↑ a b Kévin: C'est moi qui éteins les lumières , cafe-powell.com , May 1, 2013
  6. ↑ a b Hamdam Mostafavi: " Prix Courrier international :" Je recherche la simplicité et la justesse " ", interview with Zoya Pirzad on the occasion of the awarding of the Courrier international prize to the author, October 30, 2009, in French.

Web links