“The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay”
We have an idea of what it is to be French or Italian, or to live in Paris or in Florence, based on a certain familiarity with those cultures and the writings of English-speakers who’ve lived there, but we have little idea of what it is to be Persian or what Iranian society is really like. Read more
“The Colonel”
The Colonel was written by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, a Tehran-based writer and an Iranian professor of Literature who is a leading proponent of social and artistic freedom. Banned in Iran, the original version of The Colonel was written in Persian and published in Germany before being translated in English by Tom Patterdale. Recently released (April, 2012) in the United States, The Colonel is the story of a man who served in the Shah’s army and who condemns himself for committing two mortal sins in his life: killing his wife who committed adultery and refusing an army order to go to Dhofar (a province in southwest Oman) to “slaughter a bunch of hungry rebels on the grounds that they were a Soviet threat” (the Soviets had a substantial base there at the time) in 1973. Read more 
Paddock Post 