JE NE SUIS PAS UN ROMAN / I AM NOT A NOVEL – VAHABI

Information

Author:

Nasim Vahabi

Date:

Tropismes
September 2022

Author:

Additional Info

I AM NOT A NOVEL

Rights Holder: Tropismes
Original Language: French

A novel that denounces with harshness and humour the machinations of a repressive State that censors books…

When it comes to the life of books waiting to be published, it is important to know that in certain countries it’s not the publisher that has the last word but rather a ministerial office that decides the fate of a work. Whatever the name given to the ministry (of the Interior, of Culture, of Security), it pays staff that work full time from 9am to 6pm to read novels, poetry, or short story collections waiting to be published; and they are meant to decide if it is suitable for publication or not.

An author. Whose novel’s publication has been prohibited by the censor office; it is not suitable for publication because it is too pessimistic. She and her editor meet with the head of the censor office who can do nothing to help. He escorts the author down to the archives, also known to some as the “crematorium of frustration”, where the thousands of manuscripts that will never be published are stored. After the head of the office receives an emergency phone call, he leaves the author alone, locked in with these orphaned manuscripts.

An editor. Who has a late-in-life, tender romance with an archivist. Together, they come up with a wild idea: to publish the forbidden books.

A young woman. Pregnant, who learns about the abrupt death of her mother in a car accident. Her husband has a good position: he is the head of the censor office. In her mother’s phone, she reads messages from a mysterious man, that shows the evolution of their romance backwards, from the end to the beginning.

Told in separate parts, the stories of these characters unfold as we subtly come to understand that they are all connected.

“…Je ne suis pas un roman denounces the kafkaesque inner workings of the censorship apparatus, in a writing that is effective even more so since it remains understated and factual.” — Le Monde

NASIM VAHABI was born in Tehran and now lives in France. While she has published several critically acclaimed and prize-winning novels in Iran, two of her books have been prohibited from being published. She is the editorial coordinator for the contemporary Iranian story collection Amours persanes published by Gallimard.

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