Mishiat Alaei replied that Why does Iranian audience prefer foreign novels?
In an interview with ISNA, the literary critic and translator said about why we should read Iranian novels: The answer to this question is why we should read foreign novels, why we should read Iranian poetry, why eat Iranian food? The Iranian novel has the same characteristics as the European novel, that is, it is not something separate; In both, the novelist chooses a subject that is largely fictional, although the subject may be historical, or the author may have narrated the events of his life, or there may be a hint of objective social, personal, historical, and mythological reality in it. Write a story based on it and share our experience with us.
He then said: “The reason why we read novels, whether Iranian or foreign novels, other than entertaining, has a cognitive aspect and gives us knowledge about life, nature, society and the beliefs that are in it.” The author has an experience that we do not have and therefore wants to share his experience with us, and we welcome that. In this respect, there is no fundamental difference between Iranian and foreign novels; Only the author considers the realistic aspect of the novel, one is the psychology of the story and the other is the techniques of novel writing, and the other person does not pay attention to the techniques and wants to speak sooner, but all these are experiences that the author has gained and wants to share with his audience.
Emphasizing that the Iranian novel is not fundamentally different from the foreign novel, Alaei said: “It can be said that because the Iranian novel started about 200 years later, in some ways it may not reach the foreign novel, but the Iranian novel does the same thing, the same It has worries, anxieties, and sorrows, and raises religious, political, and social issues.
Regarding the fact that foreign novels seem to be preferable to Iranian novels for Iranian audiences, he said: This may be due to two reasons; As I said, the foreign novel started 200 years earlier than the Iranian and Asian novels, and there is more maturity in terms of language and topics in fiction, which may be more interesting for the reader. The second reason is that there has always been a tendency towards non-native and European subjects; For example, he likes foreign cars better, of course he does not like foreign carpets because carpets are more original and better here, but things that are for Western culture, such as cars, refrigerators and foreign medicine, he likes more, which he is right about. Of course, according to Al-Ahmad, part of it is westernization.
The translator added: “In fact, the foreign novel has a longer history, and this history gives it credibility, and the Iranian audience sees giants such as Emile Zola, Balzac, and Tolstoy, who cannot be mentioned here in such a large number or are not numerous. We have Sadegh Hedayat, Simin Daneshvar, Ahmad Mahmoud, Houshang Golshiri and Mahmoud Dolatabadi. Another reason is that from the audience’s point of view, foreign sex is better and to some extent effective. When it comes to modern or postmodern, modernism is naturally Western in nature, and as a result foreign writers can give us a better experience of it than if someone came and imitated and wrote a modern novel, so the reader is right in some ways. Of course, sometimes it may be due to self-deprecation and arrogance of Western culture.
