Hushang Golshiri’s Maʿsum-e sevvom (The Third Innocent) as a Political Thriller

Abstract Written in 1973, Hushang Golshiri (1938–2000)’s Ma ʿ sum-e sevvom (The Third Innocent), is a multilayered short story that can be read from various perspectives. In this study, I examine both its historical context and intertextual references to the twelfth-century romance of Khosrow ō Shirin by the poet Nezāmi Ganjavi (1141–1209). Indeed, that medieval romance serves the reader as a hermeneutical key, providing insight to the puzzle-like, modern work of fiction and legitimizing the possibility of its reading as a political thriller.