An Examination of Palimpsests in the Works of Shahriar Mandanipour, with Emphasis on the Two Stories “One Thousand and One Nights” and “One Thousand and One Years”

Abstract

Anchored in the metaphor of the palimpsest, this study examines the act of storytelling in Shahriar Mandanipour’s fiction, exploring how the author narrates the creation of his stories through interrogative subjects and how palimpsests emerge in this process. To this end, the palimpsestic elements of two stories that differ in terms of narrative action and mode of narration are examined through close reading. Whereas “One Thousand and One Nights” employs an entirely prose-based language, “One Thousand and One Years” adopts a metaphorical language tending toward poetry. The palimpsestic processes operating within these stories are analyzed from the perspectives of association and the theory of literary reproduction. In examining these two works, respectively, the study demonstrates how the author, through his narrative practice, places the reader in a state of suspense when confronted with a national, cultural, and social issue whose resolution lies in a future dependent upon texts from the past. This suspense compels the reader to contemplate the consequences of the issue—a form of reflection whose deeper dimensions may be accessed through the deconstruction of the text. Furthermore, the study shows how, within the framework of these narratives—whose structures consist of a sequence of enigmas and their resolutions—repressed elements return through a form of reenactment of myths and tales derived from earlier texts. By analyzing the palimpsests generated through the narrative operations of these works, the study also demonstrates how the dialectics of identity associated with subjects from the past may be rendered visible. The findings indicate that the discovery of the work’s unconscious, together with the narrative form and action of the stories, invokes its literary ancestors and establishes them as both the foundation of its design and the existential condition of its formation.