This important, timely novel is sharp, playful and zesty with life * Daily Mail *
A brilliant novel about the complexities of writing and publishing in Iran... It will help to further understanding of the frustrating and sometimes perilous situation of the book industry in a country where copyright is not respected, where writers struggle desperately to publish and can be jailed simply for exercising their imaginations * Guardian *
An absorbing and unique novel with a depth of feeling for words and stories in Iran... Censoring an Iranian Love Story is intriguing even before its first page * Scotsman *
A marvellous tale... This is a writer intoxicated with the possibilities of language, and his timely, well-translated book is about a potent love affair, not only with women, but also with words * New Statesman *
Powerful... Mandanipour's writing is exuberant, bonhomous, clever, profuse with puns and literary-political references * New Yorker *
A very special novel - a passionate, inventive and humorous exposure of the stupidity and cruelty of a society ruled by fear * The Times *
Wry, playful... Reminiscent of Milan Kundera, this is a lively account of life and letters in contemporary Iran * Financial Times *
A clever Rubik's Cube of a story [and] a haunting portrait of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran... An Escher-like meditation on the interplay of life and art, reality and fiction... At its best, Censoring an Iranian Love Story becomes a Kundera-like rumination on philosophy and politics [that] playfully investigates the possibilities and limits of storytelling * New York Times *
Rich and riveting... The absurdities of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran provide frequent moments of hilarity - typical of political satires in the tradition of Milan Kundera... Mandanipour has the potential to create a genre of Persian literature that could breach the gap in literary sensibilities that separates readers from vastly different traditions * Irish Times *
A love story that is convincingly, achingly impossible in a place where men and women cannot even look at each other in public... The effect (as every good Victorian understood) is deliriously sensual prose... Mandanipour has triumphed * Los Angeles Times *
In this brilliantly conceived and cleverly written novel, characters and author together and separately act and write with sly purpose, disguising and disavowing their subversive ends - to live, love and create in today's repressive Iranian society * Boston Globe *
Devious and engaging... A droll, even cheerful portrait of totalitarian craziness * Bloomberg News *
Telling amorous tales in post-Islamic-revolution Iran is tricky, if not downright dangerous, but Mandanipour is up to the task... And as much as humor dominates the book, it quietly gets at something else - the omnipotence of tyranny * Miami Herald *
** 'Censoring an Iranian Love Story is intriguing even before its first page . . . An absorbing and unique novel with a depth of feeling for words and stories in Iran * The Scotsman *
** 'A playful tale . . . Censoring an Iranian Love Story is a brilliant novel about the complexities of writing and publishing in Iran * Guardian *
** 'The absurdities of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran provide frequent moment of hilarity - typical of political satires in the tradition of Milan Kundera . . . Censoring an Iranian Love Story in both context and style gives us a timely glimpse of the complex and infuriatingly paradoxical society that is today's Iran . . . Mandanipour has the potential to create a genre of Persian literature that could breach the gap in literary sensibilities that separates readers from vastly different traditions * Irish Times *
** 'A marvellous tale . . . This is a writer intoxicated with the possibilities of language, and his timely, well-translated book is about a potent love affair, not only with women, but also with words * New Statesman *
