LECCE/PRESICCE-ACUARICA – On Saturday 27 April 2024 at 6.30 pm, at the Bernardini Library in Lecce (Piazzetta Carducci), a meeting of international importance will be held, with the Iranian writer, playwright and director Ghazi Rabihavi, one of the most important voices of the Iranian literary panorama, already translated into English, French and German and published in France, Germany, Egypt, and now published in Italy. The meeting is organized by Musicaos Editore in collaboration with the «In Albera» Association which deals with social promotion and reforestation in Salento.
During the meeting, the book of stories “The Four Iranian Seasons” (edited by Benedetta Pati) published by Musicaos Editore will be presented. The writer Ghazi Rabihavi will take part, who will dialogue with the curator of the volume Benedetta Pati, Gabriella Alfieri (president of the «In Albera» Association), Luciano Pagano (publisher), for the translation by Elena Camille. The musicians Giorgio Dtante (trumpet/tuba) and Samuel Mele (voice/oud) will participate. Giorgio Dtante has often intertwined his path with world music and Middle Eastern music, Samuel Mele has conducted his musical research as a multi-instrumentalist on the sounds of the Mediterranean basin. Veronica Giordano will read some passages from the collection of short stories.
Monday 29 April 2024, at 7 pm, at the Palazzo Ducale of Presicce-Acquarica (loc. Presicce), organized by the Library of Presicce-Acquarica, in collaboration with the association «In Albera», «Memoria dell’asino», Musicaos Editore, the meeting will be held with Ghazi Rabihavi, in dialogue with the publisher Luciano Pagano (for the translation by Stefania Delli Noci), which will include musical interventions by «Bright Star», and readings by Marina Pizzolante.
GHAZI RABIHAVI. Iranian writer, playwright and director, Ghazi Rabihavi was born in Abadan (Iran) in 1956. During Khomeini’s Revolution he moved to Tehran where he worked as a journalist and where he collaborated with Manoocher Deghati and Kaveh Golestan. In 1980 he published the novel Diary of a Soldier, which is why he was arrested and sentenced to death. The eight months he spent in prison cost him a ban from the Iranian Writers’ Association and allowed him to only collectively publish his next novel Hoffreh. He therefore dedicated himself to dramaturgy and cinema, working, among others, with the filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan. In 1994 he was banned from publishing any work and went into exile in London, where he currently lives and works. Among the numerous theater productions we remember Look Europe!, staged in London, New York and Amsterdam and produced by Harold Pinter who took part in it. In 2009, Rabihavi opposed the proposal to establish the Shari’a Courts in Great Britain (an attempt to introduce Islamic law into British courts for family law matters) and staged The Masculine Law, an opera composed by twenty short episodes describing the effects of this legislation on women’s rights. His latest novel The Boys of Love, dealing with the theme of homosexuality, has been translated and published in France, Germany and Egypt, but is still censored in Iran.
The context in which these stories are set is that following the Iranian revolution of the 1980s, which began in 1979 with the fall of the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iranian population, led on that occasion by various political and social groups, protested against the authoritarian monarchy, establishing an Islamic Republic based on Shiite religious principles. The new leadership consolidated power through the creation of an Islamic political system, leading to significant social and economic transformations. The revolution led to international tensions, including the American hostage crisis, affecting the geopolitical balance in the region, with consequences that still reverberate on the international political situation today.
War, marginalization, violence, hatred, censorship, are themes that unfortunately always make these stories sadly current, in pages which however are permeated by a great yearning for hope, poetry, love, amazement, courage, from characters who do not lose their humanity and the ability to feel, in the midst of a revolution, living as fugitives or prisoners in their own country, monitored, watched, followed, liable to martyrdom or capital execution. These stories seem to intertwine, with common traits that return, in the desire to live one’s existence freely, in particular with regard to the condition of the female protagonists in relation to the changes that have occurred in Iran.
Life and death intersect here, often the body of the dead and that of the living are equivalent, like that of the martyr who lies unburied, between the mud and his own blood, or that of the elderly man who wants to be buried in a cemetery forbidden, close to his wife, endangering the lives of his children who want to respect this last wish. Together with the crudest realism towards facts that would not have had their own narrative otherwise, there is an ironic and conscious look at censorship and freedom of expression.
Tags: Iranian writer director Ghazi Rabihavi Salento book short stories
