A Lover Alone in Prison: A Conversation between Ilan Stavans and Sara Khalili

Not only what we read in these global times but how depends on a number of forces. Writers, translators, editors, and publishers, consciously and otherwise, respond to these forces, offering a diet that in part responds to their individual taste while also adjusting to the larger laws of the market. In other words, all literary […]

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Ayatollahland

Why I Chose It: Michigan Quarterly Review Fiction Reader Elinam Agbo introduces Dena Afrasiabi’s story “Ayatollahland,” from our Spring 2019 Issue: Iran.  Welcome to Ayatollahland, an Iran-inspired theme park in Houston, Texas, or as Dena Afrasiabi’s narrator puts it: “a place for the wistful, disconnected members of my parents’ generation to relive their pre-revolution days.”

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Iranian Cinema, Then and Now: An Interview with Blake Atwood and Pedram Partovi

Over the weekend of February 15–17, 2019, a symposium of about a dozen scholars convened at the University of Michigan to talk about the changes and challenges facing the field of Iranian Studies forty years after the Revolution of 1978–79. In addition to art, literature, historiography, and anthropology, the topic of cinema and media studies

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A Note From the Editor

It’s arguable that in 1971 the Shah of Iran himself ignited the revolution that overthrew his regime eight years later. In a week-long series of ostentatious, garish festivities, the Shah celebrated the 2,500th year of the Foundation of the Imperial State of Iran, an event no one thought relevant except himself. He commissioned the building

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Finding Hope Amidst an Uncertain Economy: MQR Spring 2019 Cover Artist Mehdi Ghadyanloo at the 2019 World Economic Forum

Threatening objects that are suspended or held back; a mysterious door in a vast lake; a pedestrian bridge that leads to nowhere; an ocean trapped in a skewed room; a group of seemingly oblivious swimmers near a giant whirlpool in the sea; crowds of people trapped in uncertain situations; a lone Lego block-like tower in

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MQR Issue 57:6 | Spring 2019

Our Spring 2019 Issue is here!  Featuring Essays by Salar Abdoh, Sandy Feinstein, M.R. Ghanoonparvar, Mojgan Ghazirad, Mason Jabbari, Habibe Jafarian, Amy Motlagh, and Kusha Sefat Fiction by Hossein Mortezaeian Abkenar, Javad Afhami, Dena Afrasiabi, Amir Ahmadi Arian, Aliyeh Ataei, and Nilofar Shidmehr Poetry by Reza Afazali, Qeysar Aminpur, Vahe Armen, Armen Davoudian, Leila Emery, Mohammad Reza Shafi’i Kadkani, Saba Keramati, Haji Khavari, Saïdeh Pakravan, Arash Saedinia, Amir Safi, Mo H Saidi,  Sayyed Ali Salehi, H.E. Sayeh, Roger Sedarat, Sohrab Sepehri, Fatemeh

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Meet Our Contributors, MQR Spring 2019, Special Issue on Iran

Purchase MQR 57:6 (Spring 2019) — our special issue on Iran — in print or as a downloadable PDF. ___________________________________________________________________________________ SALAR ABDOH |THE ALCOVE | translation, |LIES, FAME, MEMORY, ILLNESS, AND THE THEATER OF REZA ABDOH | essay, |BEDTIME | translation, |THE INGRID BERGMAN PRINCIPLE | translation SALAR ABDOH is the author of the novels The Poet Game, Opium,

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The Wild Birds: A Review and an Interview with Emily Strelow

In her debut novel, The Wild Birds (Rare Bird Books, 2018), author Emily Strelow interrogates what it means to be “wild” by layering the word’s many meanings onto palpable, empathic, and deeply-flawed characters, all who live among the diverse and wondrous environs of the American West.  The Wild Birds is told in alternating, non-linear chapters—an appropriate

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The Beatles as Artists

Professor James Winn, who taught in the University of Michigan’s English Department from 1983-1998, passed away yesterday.  MQR Editor Emeritus Laurence Goldstein remembers James as “a complex, provocative figure and a brilliant conversationalist,” and describes his essay, “The Beatles as Artists,” as a “standard reference work for anyone writing about popular culture and the recent

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