Šekaste-nevisi as a Lens for Narrative Focus on Contemporary Iranian Society, in a Collection of Short Stories by Farḫonde Āqāʾi

In recent Persian literature, there has been increasing use of the orthographic reproduction of spoken language, used mainly for the expression of dialogues, while the narrative part continues in formal Persian. An experiment using spoken Persian as the language of the entire narrative, undertaken by Ṣādeq Čubak in the novel Sang-e ṣabur of 1966, seems long to have had no follow-up, and in the short story genre in particular, the use of spoken Persian in orthographic form seems to have persisted solely in dialogue. A rare and interesting case of the use of orthographically reproduced spoken Persian, both in dialogues and in the entire narrative, is thus the recent collection of short stories Zani bā zanbil (Woman with Basket, 2015) by the writer Farḫonde Āqāʾi. The stories composing this collection, resembling snapshots capturing particular figures and moments, are written entirely in fārsi šekaste (literally “broken Persian” or “contracted Persian”), or spoken Persian rendered in written form. Illustrating the reasons for the author’s choice of this mode of expression, this article will investigate the use of fārsi šekaste as an effective device for representing and drawing the reader’s attention to certain facets of contemporary Persian society, presenting them in their most authentic guise.