A Planet Out of Its Orbit: Postmodernism in Reza Ghassemi's The Nocturnal Harmony of Wood Orchestra

The Nocturnal Harmony of Wood Orchestra, Reza Ghassemi’s first Novel, is a rare example of Iranian postmodernist novel. Though the novel has a complicated structure, it is still well-crafted, readable and pleasing, a virtue that very often is not observed in Persian postmodernist novels. The present study analyzes the novel in the light of such terms as metafiction, ontological ambiguity, short circuit, the fall of grand narratives, decanonization, paranoia, absence, lack of certainty, and fragmentation. It hopes to conclude that The Nocturnal Harmony possesses all these characteristics of postmodernist fiction, not as an artificial collection of technical details, but as a natural consequence of narrating the confusion of a contemporary man who reflects the confusion of the world around him.