Zendegi

AFTERWORD

This novel was completed in July 2009, a month after the widely disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The result triggered massive street demonstrations that were met with a brutal crackdown, but even some members of the clerical establishment questioned the election’s legitimacy and condemned the mistreatment of protesters. Predicting the next few years is impossible – and the particular scenario I’ve imagined was always destined to be overtaken by reality – but I hope that this part of the story captures something of the spirit of the times and the courage and ingenuity of the Iranian people.

Hezb-e-Haalaa is fictitious, and is not modelled on any real organisation.

The fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini permitting gender reassignment is real (see ‘A Fatwa for Freedom’ by Robert Tait, The Guardian, 27 July 2005), as is the Iranian miniseries set in Nazi-occupied Europe (see ‘Iran’s Unlikely TV Hit’ by Farnaz Fassihi, The Wall Street Journal, 7 September 2007; in this report the title ‘Madare sefr darajeh’ is translated literally as ‘Zero Degree Turn’, but I’ve used a more vernacular English translation, ‘No Room to Turn’).

My source for stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh was Dick Davis’s translation (Viking Penguin, New York, 2006). Note, though, that the versions re-enacted in Zendegi are definitely not scrupulously faithful to the originals.

The transliterations of Farsi I’ve used are simply intended to give the reader some idea of the sound of the words; I haven’t followed any formal system.

Supplementary material for this novel can be found at