Persian Fiction Reader

by Michael Craig Hillmann

1 HARDCOVER BOOK

164 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Michael Craig Hillmann, Ph.D., (born May 5, 1940) is professor of Persian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and President of Persepolis Institute, Inc. He has published widely on Persian language and literature and specializes in lyric Persian verse, Persian prose fiction from the 1920s through the 1970s, and literary autobiography. Since the late 1990s, he has focused on Persian instructional materials development, resulting in, among other things, a new Persian language learning syllabus in four volumes called "Persian for America(ns)."

Reviews

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Farsi, generally speaking, and in contrast to English, seems to place a much higher emphasis on poetry than on prose. One might argue that English also values poetry more highly than prose. But still, I'd say the disparity in valuation is much greater in the Persian world, where novels and prose writing are a more recently legitimized phenomenon.

My personal reading taste, however, is not so sophisticated. I do tend to favor the novel. So where was I to turn to get an overview of some of the bigger names in the realm of Iranian novels and novelists? That's where this book came in handy. It provided a nice introduction and sampling of some of the bigger 20th century Iranian novels for the uninitiated such as myself.

Of course this book does have its limitations. I think some might find it to be a bit dry and dated. But overall I think it's a useful study resource for intermediate to higher intermediate non-native students of Farsi. The sample texts become progressively longer as one makes their way through the book. There is also a helpful glossary in the back. Thank you to Dr. Hillmann and Dr. Khorrami for their work to create this resource for non-native students of Farsi.