TEHRAN – Influential French novelist Émile François Zola’s “For a Night of Love” has been published in Persian.

The book translated into Persian by Mahmud Gudarzi has been published by Ofoq in Tehran.

The book was originally published in 1883 and an English translation of the book by Andrew Brown was released in 2002.

The book has been described as one of the most controversial novellas of its time.

Edmund Gosse writes, “The narrative begins with a carefully accentuated picture of a serene life: that of a timid lad sequestered in a country town; this serenity is but the prelude to events of the most appalling tragedy-a tragedy which does not merely strike or wound, but positively annihilates… It is not needful to do more than say that it is one of the most repulsive productions ever published by its author, and a vivid exception to the general innocuous character of his short stories.”

“…the poetic suggestion lurking in the tale ‘Pour une nuit d’amour,’ which Poe might almost have written, can only be traced with difficulty, for it is wrapped in a ghastly realism,” Ernest Alfred Vizetelly said.

“It is interesting to notice from a note presumably furnished by Zola himself that the source of the plot of the psychopathic novel ‘For a Night of Love’ is in Casanova,” Alison M. Lederer commented.

Zola was the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France.

The self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola’s works inspired operas such as those of Gustave Charpentier, notably Louise in the 1890s.

His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity (Claude Bernard), social Manichaeism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian translation of Émile François Zola’s “For a Night of Love”. 

MMS