A Critique of Nativisim in Persian Prose Literature 1921-1941

Nativisim in Persian Prose Literature 1921-1941, coauthored by Dr. Mustafa Gorji and FarzanehVa’ezade, explores and represents instances of nativist elements found in journals, dramas, logbooks and prose fiction published from 1921 to 1941, tracing nativist trends during these years. The nativist elements are classified into national and religious categorizes and examples of each type are studied accordingly. Although its style is simple and plain, with little grammatical mistakes, and remarkable for its detailed analysis, and although it is the first book on nativist literature written on this period, it failed to do justice to theoretical concepts and identity formation in history. The major fault of the book lie in the fact that most of the authors of the first Pahlavi era wrote their works, which wereexamined in this book, with the purpose of criticizing some of the unfavorable native and cultural aspects, which in most cases theyproved to beundefendable and thus requires correction. These works are marked with critical views on native culture in a way that ignoring them and attempting to prove their nativist nature is essentially an apparent paradox, obviously undermining the central claim of the book in the first place. Moreover, the book suffers from mistakes in the reference sectionwhich can be corrected in the next revision.