Resumen de Iranian Freaks: Embodying the Violence of the Times in Contemporary Iranian Fiction

Julie Duvigneau

• Abstract Malformed, mutilated, dismembered, blinded, paralyzed, characters in contemporary Iranian literature are subjected to brutal abuse. This article aims to show that these torments, through the work of seven authors: Ṣādeq Hedāyat, Hušang Golširi, Bahrām Ṣādeqi, Reżā Barāheni, Qāżi Rabiḥāvi, Esmāʿil Faṣiḥ and Nasim Marʿ⁠aši, all over whom the shadow of Hedāyat looms, are the incarnation of historical violence in the flesh of contemporary Iranian literature. I argue that the metamorphoses of violence that run through Iranian literature in the 20th and early 21st centuries, beyond the differences in meaning it may have, highlight a poetics of cruelty that is particularly evident in the texts of these authors.