Female Voices and Historical Trends in the Longest Persian Novel: A Radical Criticism of Maḥmūd Dawlat’ābādī’s <i>Kilīdar</i> (1978–1984)

Abstract The present scholarship on Kilīdar (1978–1984) focuses on its fictional characters as embodiments of historical individuals and offers “essentialist humanistic” interpretations of the novel. Since the novel portrays a patriarchal world, such analyses reproduce the male-focused viewpoint of the narrative, either discounting its female perspectives or relegating them to a peripheral status. The scholarship approaches the novel through the perspective of the main male protagonist and presents him as a revolutionary hero, fighting the Iranian government on behalf of the disenfranchised villagers. Without overlooking the significance of such approaches in understanding patriarchal societies that the novel dutifully replicates, this article offers an interpretation of Kilīdar that critically considers the female voices of the novel. Through a “radical interpretation” that includes both male and female voices, it argues the novel, first, represents the broad currents of contemporary Iranian history through its characters, and second, both validates and challenges the patriarchal codes imposed on men and women in rural Iranian communities in the 1940s.