Review · Avaye Tabid · issue 18
The soldier who meets himself
Sheida’s reading of Tavlan follows circular time, a wounded narrator and the collapse of the division between killer and victim in Hofre.
- Credited to
- Behrouz Sheida
- Publication
- Avaye Tabid · issue 18
- Source date
- Essay dated February 2021 · Spring 2021 issue
- Published language
- Persian
- This page
- English source guide
Works discussed
Original English editorial guide to the identified source. Critical judgments and reported recollections remain attributed; the complete original stays with its publisher.
One story within thirteen
Behrouz Sheida’s essay, Where in This Dark Night Has the Morning Fallen Asleep?, reads the thirteen stories in the Swedish anthology Tavlan. He identifies Forogh Hashabeiky as its editor and the translator of Rabihavi’s Hofre, published in Swedish as Hålan. The anthology’s bibliography points back to From This Place, Tehran, 1369 [1990]. Source 1
The Hofre section follows Ghasem’s memories after his death and the final encounter with a soldier whose wound resembles his own. Sheida reads the story’s circular time, first-person narration and painful tone as making murderer and murdered approach the same figure. For him, war becomes an act of destroying one’s own being, with envy and a desire to be mourned unsettling a heroic account of going to the front. Source 1
The relevant discussion occupies printed pages 99–100, within a longer essay on the whole anthology. Its concluding argument links the collection with silence, opposition and conflicting public narratives. That broader interpretation belongs to Sheida; the other twelve stories remain works by their respective authors. Source 1
Sources & credits
- Avaye Tabid · issue 18 · The soldier who meets himself
Avaye Tabid 18, Spring 1400 [2021]. Essay on printed pages 97–107; Hofre analysis printed pages 99–100/PDF pages 100–101, visually checked. Essay date line: February 2021; issue and essay dates are distinct.