The narrative gains a dreamlike tension as the difficulties of the outside world start to seep into her confined, affluent life. She spends most of her time in her beautiful home in Shiraz where she worries about her husband and three children.

Many of the larger themes of the novel are political, but the scenes in the book are almost all domestic because of the nature of Zari’s existence. What happens to those like Yusof who take a stand against the government? Daneshvar takes her time answering this question, letting the plot slowly unfold while keeping the narrative limited to Zari’s point of view. At first it’s not apparent how much of this fear is habitual and how much is actually warranted. Zari thinks of the bread: “What a mound of dough! How much flour they must have used! And, besides, as Yusof said, ‘At a time like this!'” Yusof is an outspoken critic of the government, while Zari remains silent out of fear. The daughter of the governor is getting married, and the heroine of the novel, Zari, is in attendance with her husband Yusof.

She opens her novel with a wedding scene in which a large loaf of bread sits on display. But as Daneshvar shows, not everyone in the country suffered from these shortages. The occupying forces bought up much of the country’s grain, leaving many Iranians to starve. While the movement of goods over Iran’s eastern border helped the Soviets in their fight against the Germans, it devastated the economy in Iran. The Allied forces were using the country as a passageway to get supplies into the Soviet Union. Originally published in 1969, this historical novel takes place during the Second World War when the British and the Soviets were occupying Iran.

Wanting to learn more about Iran, I decided to read a novel by an Iranian author and had the good luck of choosing Savushun by Simin Daneshvar.

Savushun by simin daneshvar