Historiographic Metafiction in Abbas Marufi’s The Symphony of the Dead

Abbas Marufi was a contemporary novelist with outstanding work in the literature of his land that has historical concerns. In his The Symphony of the Dead (1988), Marufi tells the history of the Second World War in Iran from the viewpoint of a small family in Ardabil. Through this story, the reader learns about the historical events of the land from a different perspective. Linda Hutcheon’s Historiographic metafiction theory, discussed in her A Poetics Of Postmodernism (1988), is applied as the theoretical framework to analyse this novel in terms of its depiction of history. Hutcheon believes that history varies with time, and there is not only one correct version (Truth) in narrating the story, but there are other truths that none are wrong. This study considers them both, employing this theory to compare and contrast them. Apart from the historical concerns, the novel gives the reader an overall picture of other social matters, such as women’s conditions, people’s attitudes towards nature, and colonial aspects. The present article studies these aspects as well.

Historiographic Metafiction in Abbas Marufi’s The Symphony of the Dead Keywords:

postmodernism , metafiction , historiography , truth , past , points of view , narration Is this winter ever going to end? Why is it always winter here? Why is the temperature always below