Mahšīd Amīršāhīʹs Afsānehā-ye Īrānī-ye ‘aṣr-e mā und James G. Thurberʹs Fables for Our Time

The Persian author Mahšīd Amīršāhī has dealt with Fables for Our Time by the American writer James G. Thurber (1894–1961) over several decades. In 1966, her Persian translations of the fables were published in Tehran. In 2001–2002 some of these fables were printed in the London Persian weekly Nīmrūz. The fables in Nīmrūz were not, however, faithful translations of Thurberʹs, but „free translations” as Amīršāhī calls her adaptations of his fables for her own ends. Amīršāhī has adapted Thurberʹs fables, which were published as an impression of life in the USA from between the World Wars until the McCarthy era, to make her own comments on the history of and living conditions in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This article provides a comparative study of Thurberʹs original fables and Amīršāhīʹs versions in Nīmrūz (and later) and of the narrative instruments employed by Amīršāhī for the appropriation of Thurberʹs materials to a contemporary Iranian setting. The article discusses their effects within the typological framework of the fable as a genre.