As he waits for the Islamic regime's censors to decide on a publication permit for his novel in Iran, an author reviews his book to find cosmetic changes that would make it pass the censors' judgment. But small changes that seem insignificant at first fundamentally alter the nature of his story, making it fall apart under the weight of its own inauthenticity.
As a product of a coup d'état in his childhood, a revolution, a war and political repression in his life in Iran, Mansour Najafi applies his lived experience of dictatorships to create a Kafkaesque tale of the kind of self-censorship that permeates a totalitarian culture. This thought-provoking novel takes its readers through the anxieties of every artist and writer as they await the judgment of cultural censors facing the impossible choice of sacrificing themselves or their art in the process.
