ISLAMISTS MENACED ITALIAN EDITORS OF IRANIAN NOVELIST
By Ahmad Ra’fat
ROME 11 Jan. (IPS) Italian editors of "The Last Day’s Light", a novel by a young Iranian writer Parviz Parvizian, have been threatened by anonymous islamist fundamentalists to withdraw the book or they would be assassinated.
Francesco Maria Gallo and Giancarlo Calzati, directors of the Giancarlo & Calzati editing house confirmed to Iran Press Service that they had received telephone calls from people who spoke in broken Italian warning them to stop editing Mr. Parvizian’s book or their bookstore would be bomb fired and themselves murdered, like the editors and translators of "The Satanic Verses", the controversial fiction for which Mr. Salman Rushdie, the world famed Anglo-Indian novelist, had been sentenced to death by Ayatollah Roohollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution of Iran.
Agents dispatched by the Islamic Republic or on its payroll had killed the Japanese translator of "The Satanic Verses", condemned as being insulting to Islam and to the Muslims prophet Mohammad and seriously wounded his Norwegian and Italian colleagues while Mr. Rushdie lived several years under strict and close protection of the Scotland Yard’s special agents before the Islamic Republic announced officially it would not attempt to carry Mr. Khomeini’s fatwa .
Assuring that in "any case" they would not bow to the menaces, both editors also confirmed that for security reasons, the author had decided to publish his book not using his real name, Parviz Parvizian being a nom de plume.
"Though we think that these people could be serious in their menaces, yet, we would not bow to the threats and accept censorship imposed by the rule of violence", Mario Gallo said in a telephone conversation.
"The Last Day’s Light", written in Italian, relates the story of a young Iranian who decides to leave his native country in the aftermath of the victory of the Islamic revolution and take refuge in a foreign land.
Parvizian, who is preparing a second book that also deals with Iran and Islam, says though the book is the adventures he faced between Shiraz in Iran and Italia, but it could also be the tale of any Iranian who has fled the Iran of ayatollahs to take refuge elsewhere and have known the same hardships.
Like Mr. Rushdie, Mr. Parvizian has been told the take some precautions following the threats to his life by alleged islamist fundamentalist. But he also says that he would not keep silent and not denouncing those behind the menaces, hinting at the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Authorities in the Italian city of Bologna say thought they have not received any complaints concerning the telephone threats, yet they are investigating the matter, which the press compares to the Rushdie case without attributing it to present regime of Tehran.
Mr. Parvizian’s book won the "Words Without Voice" Award offered by Italian editors to the first work of new and young writers. ENDS EDITORS MENACED 11103