On the Reflection of the 1953 Iranian Coup D’état in Ebrahim Golestan’s Fictions

The 1953 Iranian coup d’état is one of the significant and influential political events in the past century. Constitutional and Islamic Revolutions are two other important events in this century. In addition to the widespread reflection of the said coup d’état in fictions, it also affected the formation of literary symbolism movement. Due to the heavy political pressure in the society, many intellectual writers fighting for democracy used a coded and symbolic language to criticize the sociopolitical issues in Iran. They focused on issues such as failure of National Movement, hopelessness of people, domestic hegemony and influence of colonization in Iran. The reflection of the 1953 coup d’état in contemporary fictions has not been investigated in literary researches. Therefore, this paper aims at a descriptive-analytic discussion of how the coup d’état is reflected in the works by Ebrahim Golestan. The result shows that the said event is reflected mostly in themes, characters and settings of Golestan’s fictions. Themes such as lack of unity among people, intrusion of foreigners in political and cultural arenas, objection to the pressurized and unsecure atmosphere in the society, and hopelessness, failure, suspicion and emptiness of fictional characters and description of a hegemonic and dark setting are all reflection of the 1953 coup d’état in Golestan’s works. By resorting to symbols, Golestan indirectly criticizes the society.