Study of reader’s status in post-modern stories penned by Bijan Najdi

Bijan Najdi (1941-1997) is one of the pioneers of post-modern stories in Iran. In this article, the status of reader in his post-modern stories has been researched. In his stories, he has used a number of approaches such as addressing the reader, and obscuring the introduction of the addressee of the story for the reader; the severalty of narrators; constant and non-identical changes of the point of view and the resulting lack of coherence in the text, depiction of paradoxical worlds, and presentation of different choices to the reader throughout the story in the form of meta-fiction, self-reference, and suspension of the reader amid the imaginative and factual atmosphere of the story, non-identical changes in the focal points of the narration, and thereby establishment of a multilateral atmosphere, an open ending, and/or multiple conclusions, for stories. All and all, these show that in the preparation of the stories,  a pivotal role has been taken into consideration for the reader, and methodologies have been applied in Najdi’s stories for establishment of the ground for direct interaction of the reader and the text, and participation of the reader in development of the denotation of the texts.