UA31316 Lumen Spring 2024 Final Digital - Flipbook - Page 37
Books
Exploring a passionate
life, bravely
“I sinned, a gratifying sin, in an embrace warm and ardent”
– Forugh Farrokhzad
Not only does Asgari bring this
extraordinary figure to life in this novel,
but he also gives new words to some of her
poetry. His translations published in this
book are clearly acts of devotion, as they
sing their tales of love and loss and conflict.
By Mark Douglas
Making the shortlist for the Miles
Franklin Literary Award with your first
novel is a dream debut for any Australian
writer. Only six books made that list in
2024, one of them by recent University of
Adelaide PhD graduate Hossein Asgari –
Only Sound Remains.
Only Sound Remains is unfailingly
passionate and it is this passion which
carries the reader forward, into a
wonderful exploration of a topic worthy of
examination, leaving readers both informed
and entertained.
The Miles Franklin is given annually for
“a novel which is of the highest literary
merit and presents Australian life in any of
its phases”. The list of winners is a veritable
who’s who of Australian literature. Asgari
finds himself in very good company,
including University luminaries J.M.
Coetzee, Peter Goldsworthy and Brian
Castro who have been shortlisted in
the past.
“This is the first major work I have
written in English, before this I always
wrote in Farsi,” Asgari says in an
on-campus interview. “Writing in Farsi is
very different – it’s more emotive and fluid
and from the heart. Writing in English is a
more conscious process.”
Asgari left Iran in 2007 for Malaysia,
where he received his first PhD, in physics,
from Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur.
He migrated to Australia in 2013, and says,
although he has always felt the urge to write,
and has written since he was 18, “until I
arrived here, I didn’t know there was such a
thing as a degree in creative writing”.
This discovery began a new journey for
Asgari who commenced his PhD studies
in the Department of English and Creative
Writing in 2017. This novel – since
substantially re-written – formed a part
of his thesis.
Only Sound Remains tells a fresh new
story of Australian life, introducing this
reader to aspects of the Iranian diaspora,
displaced by conflict, and the literary and
political life of that country at a critical time.
Mark Douglas is Editor of Lumen.
Hossein Asgari received his PhD (Creative
Writing) from the University of Adelaide in
2021 and thanks his “supervisors and friends
at the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative
Practice who were on my side for four
wonderful years”. His novel was also
shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s
Literary Awards 2024.
Set in Adelaide, interspersed with vivid
depictions and memories of Iranian life
around the time of the fall of the Shah, it is
a multi-generational story being shared by a
visiting father with his expatriate son.
Central to this story is the feminist
Iranian poet and film director Forugh
Farrokhzad – a hugely controversial figure
in her lifetime for her very open views about
feminine lust and love at a time when this
was never discussed, and women were more
chattels than chatelains. Her early death in
a car accident in 1967, aged 32, only added
to her tragic mystique, and Asgari helps
revive her story, and her work, as he weaves
it through the narrative.
“I’ve always been fascinated by her – by
how much she was willing to sacrifice and
suffer for her art,” Asgari says. “To write in
1950s Iran, as a woman, about desire was
brave and ahead of her time. Her work was
still banned when I first discovered it as
a teenager.”
LUMEN
An excerpt from his novel is on the following
pages, along with his translation of the titular
poem by Forugh Farrokhzad.
Only Sound Remains, by Hossein Asgari,
Puncher & Wattmann, 2023.
Portrait of the author, by Isaac Freeman, taken
at the Rundle Street tea room, Curiositeas,
where he often writes.
