Criticism & reception
Reviews and scholarship on Ghazi Rabihavi’s fiction, theatre and films, attributed to the people who wrote them.
Attributed sources
The artist inside a documentary
Scholarship · Vahid Keshavarz Sarkar · Brunel University London · English · Thesis title page · March 2025
A practice-based thesis documents Rabihavi’s participation in Colours of Exile and the filmmaker’s approach to artists’ testimony.
From inherited images to equal lovers
Scholarship · Anahita Hosseini · Persian summary and translation by Bijan Sabbagh · Dojensgara · Persian · 17 April 2017
A literary-historical essay names Boys of Love among different forms of contemporary fiction about same-sex relationships.
The soldier who meets himself
Review · Behrouz Sheida · Avaye Tabid · issue 18 · Persian · Essay dated February 2021 · Spring 2021 issue
Sheida’s reading of Tavlan follows circular time, a wounded narrator and the collapse of the division between killer and victim in Hofre.
Nightmares shape the novel
Review · Unsigned new-books notice · Avaye Tabid · issue 32 · Persian · Winter 1401 · journal prints 2023
An unsigned journal notice reads Daniel and His Father through the interruption of everyday reality by the narrator’s nightmares.
War remains a shared suffering
Review · Shabnam Kohanchi · Ketab News · credited to Etemad · Persian · 27 September 2023
Kohanchi’s survey sets Rabihavi’s early war writing beside other accounts of displacement, injury and civilian life.
From This Place in a reading column
Review · Mahmoud Mo’taqedi · Azim Khalili, credited reporters · Kelk · issues 11–12 / Noormags · Persian · Bahman–Esfand 1369 · January–March 1991
A bibliographic record locates a contemporary reading-column mention of From This Place in Kelk.
Fetneh · a journal reading
Review · Mansour Morid · Siah Mashq · issue 19 / Noormags · Persian · Winter 1399 · December 2020–March 2021
A four-page critical article about Fetneh is identified in the Siah Mashq bibliography.
White Stone · a critical article
Review · Gholamreza Manjezi · Siah Mashq · issue 19 / Noormags · Persian · Winter 1399 · December 2020–March 2021
The Carnival of Death is a documented critical article on Rabihavi’s White Stone.
Love amid the autumn books
Review · Patricia de Figueiredo · Singulars · French · Page dateline · 2 October 2020; body also prints 2 September
An autumn literary round-up reads the French Boys of Love through social constraint, wandering and the endurance of love.
A bookseller follows the journey
Review · Anne-Laure · post published under Sandy’s account · Librairie Le Failler · literary blog · French · 25 August 2020
A signed bookseller review follows Jamil’s movement from family expectations into a dangerous search for a freer life.
The lovers and the changing regime
Review · Bruno Boniface · Commune · French · 31 December 2022 · modified 1 September 2023
Boniface reads the French novel as a journey through different forms of violence, with Iran itself occupying the centre of the scene.
Four voices in one bed
Review · onarretetout · published pseudonym · main tenant · CanalBlog / Paperblog republication · French · 5 September 2022
A personal-blog reading of Maryam’s Smile considers four interior monologues, the lost intimacy of a family and the intrusion of public authority into private life.
A reader’s forbidden loves
Review · Jfp · published reader name · critiquesLibres.com · French · 30 April 2023
A signed reader review values the novel’s breadth and its defence of the freedom to love.
Before the Almeida reading
Review · David Lister · The Independent · English · 3 October 1997 · preview of 5 October reading
Lister speaks to Harold Pinter and Anna Friel before the first Almeida reading of Look Europe!, connecting performance with responsibility towards prisoners of conscience.
Beyond epic, towards history
Review · Uncredited Ahvaz correspondent · remarks by Bahman Saki · Iran Book News Agency · Persian · 28 October 2025
An Ahvaz literary discussion records Bahman Saki’s view of Rabihavi’s place in the writing of war-stricken lives.
A friend remembers the pace
Review · Yarali Pourmoghaddam · excerpt posted by Khalil Paknia · Bagh dar Bagh · literary weblog · Persian · Excerpt posted · 9 September 2010
A surviving quoted passage offers a fellow writer’s lively comparison of Rabihavi’s narrative pace with the rhythm of another storyteller.
A novelist listens to a poem
Review · Ghazi Rabihavi · comment within an unsigned feature · Radio Zamaneh · Persian · 18 February 2016
Rabihavi responds to Mohammad Tangestani’s The Sunflower in a feature that also carries Esmail Khoi’s critical comment.
Love against inherited taboos
Review · Asad Seif · Baang · Persian · 24 November 2020
Seif distinguishes the lovers’ relationship from sexual coercion, reading the novel through censorship, exile and remembered guilt.
Readers disagree about the odyssey
Review · Individual community reviewers · including Thibaut, Paul B, Floflyy and Isaac Orzuna · Goodreads · French · English · Spanish · German · Individual reviews dated 2022–2025 · retained page accessed September 2026
A community-review page preserves contrasting responses to the novel’s emotional intensity, narrative ambition and accumulation of suffering.
The restraint of a film character
Review · Alireza Khalilzadeh · quoting Ghazi Rabihavi’s earlier criticism · Iran Book News Agency · Nowruz with Literary Adaptation · Persian · 25 March 2024 · retrospective article
A retrospective on Nasser Taghvai’s Captain Khorshid preserves Rabihavi’s appreciation of restrained, unsentimental storytelling.
After certainty
Review · Mehrak Kamali · Tribune Zamaneh · credited to Radio Zamaneh · Persian · Republication · 5 April 2014
Kamali places Hofre in an argument about uncertainty, inwardness and the survival of fiction after the revolution.
Power in the smallest room
Review · Mehrak Kamali · Baru · issue six · Persian · Issue-six site · summer 2021; later site · February–March 2022
A reading of Hofre and The Wound that recognises their achievement while questioning what remains outside the frame.
Before a single war narrative
Scholarship · Amir Moosavi · Middle Eastern Literatures · English · Published online · 3 August 2026
The abstract proposes a more inclusive history of the earliest Iran–Iraq war fiction.
Two stories at the beginning
Scholarship · Mehdi Tahmasebi · Shahrekord University · contemporary-literature journal · Persian · Volume 4, issue 2 · Esfand 1404
An academic record compares Rabihavi’s early war story with Nasser Moazin’s The Last Look from the Khorramshahr Bridge.
A violin inside the upheaval
Review · Filip Noubel · Asymptote · English · 15 July 2024
Noubel reads Poupeh Missaghi’s English translation through love, music, social power and the narrator’s foreknowledge.
When the projector keeps running
Review · Hossein Noushazar · Zamaneh Media · English · English · 23 September 2025
Noushazar interprets Cinema’s Blood through its encounter with Bergman’s Persona, sound and enforced silence.
Trade, faith and a branch
Review · Taryll Baker · UK Film Review · English · 3 May 2021
Baker’s review follows the ordinary craftsman whose search for wood becomes a confrontation with belief.
A confession manufactured
Review · Jason Knight · UK Film Review · English · 28 May 2021
Knight reads Loophole as a confined drama of coercion, medical authority and a recorded confession.
What realism cannot simply show
Review · Bahman Panjali · Radio Zamaneh · Persian · 17 August 2018
An unsparing argument about the limits of epic, melodrama and realism in representations of war.
A story against the centre
Review · Ali Zokaei · Radio Zamaneh · Tribune contribution · Persian · 23 August 2023
Zokaei uses Deleuze and Guattari to read the southern stories through work, landscape, bodies and minority positions.
The king as a dramatic person
Review · Masoud Kadkhodaei · Radio Zamaneh · Persian · 4 September 2022
Kadkhodaei asks how the Shah speaks, thinks and behaves within The Tragedy of a Monarchy.
A crown without command
Review · Esfandiar Kusheh · Radio Zamaneh · Persian · 13 July 2022
Kusheh reads the play through royal passivity, surrounding powers, humour and dramatic forewarning.
Waiting for the catastrophe
Review · Esfandiar Kusheh · Radio Zamaneh · Persian · 23 January 2023
A reading of Daniel and His Father in which inherited violence and narrative warnings disturb a single day.
Between inheritance and arrival
Review · Mehran Rezaei · Baang · Persian · 23 March 2024
Rezaei places Daniel and His Father between myth, migration and a narrator who has not escaped being a son.
Exile before the border
Review · Rouzbeh Jourkesh · Radio Zamaneh · later republished by Baang · Persian · 10 September 2020 · Baang republication 18 April 2023
Jourkesh reads displacement as both a political condition and an injury to intimate relations.
Another London
Review · Hadi Keykavousi · Independent Persian · Persian · 21 May 2023
Keykavousi contrasts a public city of ceremony with the isolation of Daniel and His Father.
Lives after the promises
Profile · Asad Seif · Deutsche Welle Persian · guest essay · Persian · 3 April 2024
Seif follows a career through refinery workers, revolutionary hopes, displacement and the later theatre of exile.
Who kills whom?
Review · Hossein Ateshparvar · Baang · Persian · 16 March 2023
A close reading of Hofre’s impossible narrator and the moment in which subject and object become inseparable.
The people outside the heroic frame
Review · Faraj Sarkohi · Radio Farda · Persian · 12 September 2010
Sarkohi’s wider survey values war fiction that changes the reader’s understanding of ordinary lives.
Survival in another room
Review · Hossein Noushazar · Radio Zamaneh · Wandering in the Text · Persian · 20 September 2006
Noushazar reads From This Place through displaced households, dramatic encounters and the struggle to keep living.
An object holding a life
Review · Neda Haffari · Peyrang · Persian · Visible date · 7 June 2021; publication metadata · 5 June 2021
Haffari’s reading of The Wound attends to a displaced room, the family’s economic reversal and objects carrying unspoken pressure.
A voice above the rubble
Review · Noushin Shahrokhi · Shahrzad News · republished on Noufe · Persian · 8 November 2008
Shahrokhi reads an earthquake monologue through the temporary reversal of a violent marriage.
L’amour en fuite
Review · Robert Pénavayre · Culture 31 · also ClassicToulouse · French · ClassicToulouse · 26 October; Culture 31 · 27 October 2020
Pénavayre approaches the French novel as an intimate odyssey across hostile social and political landscapes.
Love amid the upheaval
Review · Jérôme Cholet · Sonntagsblatt · German · 13 May 2023
Cholet reads Söhne der Liebe through unequal origins, successive flights and the people who briefly offer refuge.
Crisis, war and everyday life
Review · Roza Ghaleh Dar · Karavan · 2/2020 · Swedish · 1 June 2020 · also Karavan 2/2020
Ghaleh Dar reads Hålan within Tavlan’s wider encounter with Iranian war, power, exile and ordinary life.
Four monologues of a damaged home
Review · Florian Benoit · Mare Nostrum · French · 27 August 2022
Benoit reads Le Sourire de Mariam through parental tenderness, confined space and a silence larger than one household.
The rules imposed on a body
Review · Philippe Brenot · Liberté, égalité, sexualité · Le Monde blog · French · 20 August 2020
Brenot’s signed essay follows childhood gender roles, patriarchal authority and the lovers’ search for safety.
Guilt does not tell the whole story
Review · Serge Cabrol · Encres Vagabondes · French · 8 October 2020
Cabrol questions the narrator’s guilt while following mutual love, danger and the survival of humour.
Close together, unable to speak
Review · lilylit · Lily Lit · personal literary blog · French · 25 October 2022
A mixed response to the alternating inner voices of Le Sourire de Mariam and the couple’s tragic failure of communication.
An important voice, a difficult reading
Review · Julien · Culture déconfiture · literary blog · French · 21 August 2025
Julien recognises the novel’s significance while describing a reading that did not fully draw him in.
A production challenged
Review · Jamileh Nedaei · Shahrvand · Persian · 17 November 2016
Nedaei’s London festival essay is sharply critical of Shirin’s dramatic construction and representation of women.
One performer above the rubble
Review · Ali Sedighi · Asre Nou · Persian · 1 February 2013
Sedighi recognises Avar-e Eshq’s staging ambition while questioning the length and demands of its monologue.
A reading close to performance
Review · Mohammad Abdi · BBC Persian · Persian · 15 September 2015
Abdi follows the London reading of Shaw in Golestan’s translation, appreciating its voices while noticing their different registers.
When the document meets the stage
Review · Uta Ruge · taz · culture · German · 8 October 1997
Ruge questions whether the Almeida’s documentary staged reading gave its political subject enough dramatic life.
Returning to the southern landscape
Review · Mohammad Abdi · Radio Farda · Persian · 7 August 2020
Abdi values the novel’s southern setting and character relationships while placing it against parts of the later theatre repertoire.
A censor, a cup of coffee
Review · Margarida Santos Lopes · Relações Internacionais · 25 · Portuguese · March 2010 · pages 151–154
Santos Lopes encounters Rabihavi through an anthology’s parable of censorship and its wider view of Iranian writing.
Love in the literature of exile
Review · Behjat Omid · conversation with Asad Seif · Tribune Zamaneh · from Deutsche Welle · Persian · 2 January 2014
A critic discusses sexuality, social constraint and the space that diaspora fiction gives to previously suppressed subjects.
The story and its literary company
Profile · Bijan Bijari · Radio Zamaneh · Persian · 5 August 2016
A historical passage in Bijari’s essay places Rabihavi among the writers of the Thursday sessions and Eight Stories.
The war through a child’s gaze
Review · Khadem · Shahrara News · Persian · 25 September 2023
A survey of war fiction reads When the Smoke of War through Naji’s search for his brother.
An argument over the meaning of war literature
Review · Ahmad Shakeri · responding to Mahrokh Ebrahimpour’s interview · Iran Book News Agency · Persian · Response · 14 November 2025; interview · 12 November
Two IBNA publications show opposing views of independence, literary value and the ideological meaning of writing about war.
The hidden geography of a reading life
Review · Ali Shoroughi · Iran Book News Agency · Persian · 21 January 2026
A review of Arash Azarpanah’s book records a conversation with Rabihavi among its interviews about form, language and writing.
War before the heroic pattern
Review · Uncredited reporter · assessment by Mohammad Ghasemzadeh · Radio Farda · Persian · 27 September 2004
A researcher distinguishes writing about war-stricken daily life from later narrative conventions of military heroism.
Violence written into the body
Scholarship · Julie Duvigneau · Oriente Moderno · English · Volume 104, 2024 issue · publication metadata 30 May 2025
Duvigneau’s abstract includes Rabihavi in a comparative study of bodily injury and historical violence in Iranian fiction.
Three early books in Iranica
Scholarship · Encyclopaedia Iranica · compiled entry · Encyclopaedia Iranica · English · 15 December 1991 · updated 23 June 2015
A history of children’s literature preserves a brief contemporary account of Rabihavi’s early books.
The workers behind the photograph
Review · Nasim Khalili · Baang · Persian · 15 August 2026
Khalili reads a refinery story through the relations between workers, machinery and power.
War writing beside another voice
Review · Nasim Khalili · Baang · Persian · 11 December 2025 · 19 February 2026
Two reviews place Rabihavi in the continuing conversation about how fiction encounters war.
Literature facing war’s aftermath
Review · Monireh Baradaran · Baang · Persian · 17 April 2026
Baradaran places Rabihavi among writers attending to war’s destructive human consequences.
A writer among his contemporaries
Review · Keyhan Khanjani · Hossein Noushazar · Hossein Imanian · Rouzbeh Jourkesh · Baang · Persian · Four essays · November 2020 to June 2022
Four distinct critical passages show where Rabihavi appears in discussions of other writers.
Boys of Love on a library reading list
Selection · Queere Vielfalt project · institutional recommendation list · Fachstelle Öffentliche Bibliotheken M-V · German · Undated list · PDF metadata 20 December 2023
The German novel appears among reading recommendations for libraries and cultural organisations in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
From cinema to the written page
Scholarship · Laurent Garreau · La Chouette et le Jardin · Utopiran · French · Written April 2024 · book dated 2024 · HAL deposit 31 July 2026
Garreau places Rabihavi’s French novels within a wider account of literary testimony, imprisonment and creative freedom.