Howard Brenton, Iranian Nights

Steve Barfield (University of Human Development, Suleymanyia, Iraqi Kurdistan)

Ed. by Aleks Sierz, Independent Scholar - Europe
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1998

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

Iranian Nights (Royal Court, 1989), written by Howard Brenton in collaboration with Tariq Ali, was a short and timely response to the notorious fatwa edict issued against Salman Rushdie, for writing The Satanic Verses, by Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatolla Khomeini. Written in five days, and referring in its title to the One Thousand and One Nights, the play defended Rushdie in the name of free speech, while explaining the left’s perspective on the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in the contexts of both racism against immigrants to Britain and as a relatively recent, right-wing political development in Islamic countries. It attracted a reasonable (and unusual) number of Muslim audience members to the …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

900 words

Citation: Barfield, Steve. "Iranian Nights". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 March 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9072, accessed 22 November 2024.]

Save this article