Love against inherited taboos

The difference between love and domination

Baang republishes Asad Seif’s extended reading of Boys of Love as the novel appears in French. Seif places the relationship between Jamil and Naji within the history of revolution, persecution and displacement. He emphasises the novel’s distinction between mutual love and the sexual abuse enabled by unequal power, arguing that this contrast gives the lovers’ bond its force. Source 1

The review attends to Jamil’s address to his dead lover, the memory of dancing, and the guilt that drives him to write. For Seif, narration becomes an attempt to return to the past and ask forgiveness. This is a critic’s reading of the fictional narrator, rather than biographical testimony about Rabihavi. Source 1

Seif connects literary taboos with censorship and the difficulty of leaving inherited prohibitions behind. His description of the novel as a first in Iranian literature remains his historical assessment, rather than a settled priority claim. The page’s mention of the Médicis selection belongs to its 2020 French-publication context and establishes no prize victory. Source 1

Intimacy in a gesture

Seif’s distinction between love and coercion also concerns how the novel tells an intimate scene. He notes that a gesture of tenderness can carry the lovers’ relationship without an explicit description of sex, leaving its continuation to the reader. He connects this restraint with the difficulty of finding a Persian language for desire beyond inherited shame, arguing that the novel reveals social and emotional experience rather than merely exposing a taboo. Source 1

Sources & credits

1. Baang · Love against inherited taboos

   24 November 2020. Source publication; the guide identifies the specific Rabihavi passage and keeps its voice attributed.