Othello in Wonderland: And, Mirror-Polishing Storytellers (Bibliotheca Iranica: Performing Arts Series)

Othello in Wonderland and Mirror-Polishing Storytellers are two post-revolutionary Persian plays by Gholamhoseyn Saedi, the prominent fiction writer and best-known Iranian playwright of this century. In these plays, Saedi deals with the most vital issues facing the people of his country after the establishment of the Islamic government in Iran. Written in exile in Paris, these plays display a boldness and fearless disregard for censorship. In Othello in Wonderland, which is a fictional case study of censorship, a theatrical troupe tries to stage the Shakespearean play, Othello, with tragic, albeit humorous, consequences as a result of the clashes of views and ideologies of the officials and supporters of the Islamic regime and the secular intelligentsia in Iran. Mirror-Polishing Storytellers, on the other hand, is an explicitly anti-war play in which Saedi presents gruesome pictures of war and its effects on individuals and families.