The Persian Novel

Many of the world’s greatest novels have been translated into Persian. The Persian novel tradition also claims its masters, but there is no significant trace of Persian novels in the international literary market or critical discussions – no Iranian novelist has ever been awarded a significant literary prize and, except in orientalist communities, Iranian novelists are almost completely unknown in the outside world. Any anthology of World Literature gives evidence of this: despite novels being published for more than a century, it is still classical literature that represents Iran. What delays the globalization of Persian novels? Is the problem textual and the quality of the works or is it extra-textual and the fault of the networks that play a part in the globalization of a novel tradition? As a partial response to these problems, the present study deals with questions about the novel in the Persian literary system, the literary discourse in the Iranian cultural context and modern Persian literature on the global scene.