Critical Praise

"I absolutely loved Censoring an Iranian Love Story. Insightful and sensual, humorous and sly, allegorical and literary, it is an endless pleasure: a celebration of love and the written word from a part of the world where both still matter."

—Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan

"With the many books about Iran flooding the shelves, it is a joy to come across Censoring an Iranian Love Story, which offers a perspective that is neither sentimental nor nostalgic, romanticized nor demonized. Looking at his country and its inhabitants through a fiction writer’s authentic spectacles, Shahriar Mandanipour has written a novel that is witty, smart, funny, and honest. It is an important book for our times."

—Rabih Alameddine, author of The Hakawati

"Shahriar Mandanipour, the struggling Iranian author portrayed with mischievous wit and serious intent in this elaborately chambered double-novel by the real-life Shahriar Mandanipour --- a prominent, censored Iranian writer --- labors anxiously over the love story of Sara and Dara under the sharp eyes of a censor of disturbingly omniscient powers... From Kafkaesque bureaucracy to a blind movie censor to violent repression, Mandanipour, summoning both irony and outrage, illuminates the labyrinth of paradoxes entrapping the politically repressed, and celebrates the liberating powers of literature and love. A charming, canny, and rambunctious novel of courage and freedom against all odds."

—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)