meanwhile, back in Iran …

Censorship, inhibition of free thought, and intimidation of writers are once again the order of the day since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, according to the Observer:

After the 1979 Islamic revolution, the government imposed strict rules on book publishing. Since then, the Ministry of Culture has been charged to vet all books before publication, mainly for erotic and religious transgressions. All books, including fiction, are required to conform to Islamic law.

Iranian literature showed brief signs of resurgence during the cultural thaw that took place when Mohammad Khatami became President in 1997. Khatami created a more open cultural atmosphere by allowing a huge number of books to be published. But the literary spring of Khatami’s era was fleeting.

A new regime of censorship began when Ahmadinejad took office. The cultural ministry imposed rules requiring renewed permits for previously published books. As a result, many books have been deemed unsuitable for publication or reprinting.

Many world classics, contemporary novels and dozens of international bestsellers have been banned, including a Farsi translation of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece The Gambler, Tracy Chevalier’s bestseller Girl With a Pearl Earring, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and some books by Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Dan Brown and Woody Allen.

Next time you hear from a whippersnapper that Iran isn’t a totalitarian country, it’s only “repressive,” please remember that the Iranian government controls what can and cannot be published. That, dear readers, is evil, because it suppresses the human rights of individuals to freedom of thought, regardless of what you call it.

Listen to the punishment meted out to one writer who crossed the hard-line censors [e.a.]:

The novelist Yaghoub Yadali was recently illegally imprisoned for 40 days by the government for several passages from his novel Mores of Unrest, a book which had ministry permission. He was eventually charged with dissemination of falsehood and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, as well as being required to write three mandatory articles.

Chilling.

This led to an outcry among many Iranian writers, who believe that the government is invading the imagination.

Yes, and that is the ultimate punishment—something out of science fiction—to have the government prescribe what you can and cannot write, or must or must not write, or can or cannot think.

It’s possible for people to resist this, of course. People have, and do. But why should they have to? Totalitarianism is very cruel. Not many can resist. Eventually, most go into hibernation, like this man:

‘It’s almost nine months since my translation of Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country was given to the ministry. Since then we have had no response,’ says Mojtaba Pourmohsen, whose interview with Saghi Ghahraman, an Iranian lesbian poet based in Canada, published in Shargh Daily, became an excuse for the government to close down the most prominent reformist paper of the country. ‘I’m too tired now. I have no energy to go on with literature in Iran.

There’s a slim ray of hope, though—due to the technological revolution:

Reza Ghassemi, an important Iranian novelist based in France, recently published his new novel, The Abracadabra Murmured by Lambs, on the internet in a free ebook PDF format instead of facing government censorship and the formal permission procedure. His enovel has been reviewed and welcomed by the huge Iranian blog community much more warmly than if it had been published on paper.

Change happens slowly, but enlightenment will win the day … I hope.