The Night's Journey
Encyclopedia
The Night's Journey is a novel by Bahman Sholevar
.
in fear for his life. In 1984 he translated the novel with its original title The Night's Journey & The Coming of the Messiah, which was published in the United States. The book has remained banned in Iran
for the past 43 years. It was reprinted in the United States in its original Persian in 2010.
It is the story of the Homeric son of a Falstaffian father, with more than a mere generation gap between them; as well as that a society where the writer is denied not only the privilege “to forge the conscience of his race," or “to purify the dialect of the tribe," but the very right to exist.
We have the portrait of the artist as an adolescent, as medical student, lunatic, gangster, exile, clown. The panorama of the mid-twentieth century Persian society is presented with corruption rampant everywhere: in the Royal Court; in the judicial, correctional & educational systems; in the army, the police, and the secret police. the degrading plight of women; the inhuman plight of prostitutes, peasants, the poor and the downtrodden; the demeaning literary scene where writers, muzzled, emasculated, and sterilized by official tyranny, starved by a mob of illiterate. ignorant, and mercenary book-by-the-pound-selling publishers. vent their furies and waste their creative energies in petty jealousies and personal enmities.
It is the story of Akbar Shiraz, the noble thug. the "looti," the last scion of a "chivalric" social order in the Persian folk culture, with an ancestry as ancient and time-honored as that of their Japanese cousins the samurai. Taking payoffs from gamblers, bootleggers, and smugglers. he has his own rigid code of honor, and he gives generously of himself to the poor and to the needy. With his outmoded dagger or knife, he is still the champion of his territory, the Quixotic protector of the weak, the old, women, and children. When he is hanged in a public square, amidst the obscene Wisecracks, catcalls, and whistles of the scum of the city, he seems as already belonging to a vanished past, like the last red man sent packing to the happy hunting grounds of his forefathers.
It is the story of the orphaned peasant who escapes to the city at fourteen to become a house boy: to be molested, used, and abused by every man, woman, and child, before he earns his manhood. It is a story of an education by trial and error. by illusion and disillusion.
It is the story of the musician turned doctor who blows his brains out on the eve of his graduation. It is the story of the artist turned doctor, who enlists as a private in the infantry as a futile gesture of rebellion.
The last part of the novel is a Menippean satire in which the artist turned clown, in a state of supreme hangover, holds up the mirror of history to reflect the modern police state. Meditating upon his own plight, the anti-hero proposes three possible courses of action for himself: to sign a pact with the devil, which he finds indecent: to go on a Macduffian mission, which he finds impractical; or to commit suicide, which he finds cowardly. In the midst of despair, he is suddenly struck "by a Roman thought," a la Mark Anthony. What that "Roman thought" is not revealed. Exit the hero with his gracious bilingual leave-taking-"ta ta" and "Ciao"--finishing off the novel, or rather leaving it unfinished.
Bahman Sholevar
Bahman Sholevar is an Iranian-American novelist, poet, translator, critic, psychiatrist and political activist. He began writing and translating at age 13. At ages 18 and 19 he translated William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and T. S...
.
Summary
The Night's Journey is a 204-page book which is a novel of ideas, as well as a social and political satire. It was published in Tehran in 1967 and was immediately banned by the government, forcing the author to flee to the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in fear for his life. In 1984 he translated the novel with its original title The Night's Journey & The Coming of the Messiah, which was published in the United States. The book has remained banned in Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
for the past 43 years. It was reprinted in the United States in its original Persian in 2010.
Plot summary
The Night's Journey is a journey into the midnight darkness of the soul, a descent into the Hades of a modern police state. It is the story of two generations: one brooding in despair over the memory of a defeat: the other born to defeat, with neither the memory nor the hope of a battle.It is the story of the Homeric son of a Falstaffian father, with more than a mere generation gap between them; as well as that a society where the writer is denied not only the privilege “to forge the conscience of his race," or “to purify the dialect of the tribe," but the very right to exist.
We have the portrait of the artist as an adolescent, as medical student, lunatic, gangster, exile, clown. The panorama of the mid-twentieth century Persian society is presented with corruption rampant everywhere: in the Royal Court; in the judicial, correctional & educational systems; in the army, the police, and the secret police. the degrading plight of women; the inhuman plight of prostitutes, peasants, the poor and the downtrodden; the demeaning literary scene where writers, muzzled, emasculated, and sterilized by official tyranny, starved by a mob of illiterate. ignorant, and mercenary book-by-the-pound-selling publishers. vent their furies and waste their creative energies in petty jealousies and personal enmities.
It is the story of Akbar Shiraz, the noble thug. the "looti," the last scion of a "chivalric" social order in the Persian folk culture, with an ancestry as ancient and time-honored as that of their Japanese cousins the samurai. Taking payoffs from gamblers, bootleggers, and smugglers. he has his own rigid code of honor, and he gives generously of himself to the poor and to the needy. With his outmoded dagger or knife, he is still the champion of his territory, the Quixotic protector of the weak, the old, women, and children. When he is hanged in a public square, amidst the obscene Wisecracks, catcalls, and whistles of the scum of the city, he seems as already belonging to a vanished past, like the last red man sent packing to the happy hunting grounds of his forefathers.
It is the story of the orphaned peasant who escapes to the city at fourteen to become a house boy: to be molested, used, and abused by every man, woman, and child, before he earns his manhood. It is a story of an education by trial and error. by illusion and disillusion.
It is the story of the musician turned doctor who blows his brains out on the eve of his graduation. It is the story of the artist turned doctor, who enlists as a private in the infantry as a futile gesture of rebellion.
The last part of the novel is a Menippean satire in which the artist turned clown, in a state of supreme hangover, holds up the mirror of history to reflect the modern police state. Meditating upon his own plight, the anti-hero proposes three possible courses of action for himself: to sign a pact with the devil, which he finds indecent: to go on a Macduffian mission, which he finds impractical; or to commit suicide, which he finds cowardly. In the midst of despair, he is suddenly struck "by a Roman thought," a la Mark Anthony. What that "Roman thought" is not revealed. Exit the hero with his gracious bilingual leave-taking-"ta ta" and "Ciao"--finishing off the novel, or rather leaving it unfinished.