Symphony of the Dead

A classic of modern Iranian fiction

Symphony of the Dead traces the fate of the troubled Urkhani family in the provincial Iranian town of Ardabil before and after the second world war through the trials and ghostly recollections of its very individual members: Ideen, the frustrated poet unhinged since childhood by the excesses of his stern and incorrigible father; Urhan, his greedy and talentless younger brother; and Yousef, whose childhood antics with an umbrella left him paralysed and helpless.

Into this male dystopia are woven the hardships of the long-suffering asthmatic mother, weary from the disturbances caused by her men, and the silent, spectral presence of the daughter Ida, whose own search for happiness is forgotten amid the bedlam.

From the nut-seller’s souk to the Lord’s Electric Fan Factory and thence to the family’s inharmonious home, Abbas Maroufi’s symphony is a brilliant variation on the theme of discord. At times hysterical, at times deeply tragic, the author has created a portrait of postwar Iranian life in tones both vivid yet subtle that is simply without comparison.

'Over the course of the book's four movements, traumatic events reoccur, contrasted with the constants of daily life, and abetted by fluid shifts in time and perspective. Maroufi, who has been in exile in Germany since 1996 (when he was convicted of “insulting Islamic values”), forges a desperate cycle of self-preservation and self-destruction in this tense and sorrowful narrative' – Publishers Weekly

'The symphonic framework is unusual for a novel that is otherwise so firmly founded in a different tradition, but Maroufi uses it effectively. The book is surprisingly like such a massive orchestral work -- a complex feat which Maroufi pulls off exceptionally well'
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