Boys of Love

During a wedding celebration, Jamil, the sole heir of a rich landowner, meets Naji, who sells hay for a living. The novel follows the boys’ escape from their village in the hopes of finding a place where they can be together freely. Even as their love evolves, their strong connection remains, which helps see them through the upheavals of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.

In Boys of Love, Ghazi Rabihavi offers both a universal story about the ups and downs of all relationships and a clear-eyed portrait of same-sex desire in Iran, where homosexuality remains punishable by death. Banned in Iran, the novel was initially published in Farsi in the UK, then translated into French and shortlisted for the Prix Médicis étranger. Rabihavi avoids both lasciviousness and exoticism in depicting a deep love between male characters living through the Iranian Cultural Revolution. Ultimately, this story challenges preconceived notions about marginalized communities in the Middle East.

Ghazi Rabihavi is an Iranian playwright and novelist who began his career as a screenwriter for the Iranian film industry. His 1997 play Look Europe! was produced by Harold Pinter, and a short story of his was included in the 2005 PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature.

Poupeh Missaghi is a writer, a translator both into and out of Persian, Asymptote’s Iran editor-at-large, an educator, and the author of the novel trans(re)lating house one. Her nonfiction, fiction, and translations have appeared in numerous journals, and she has several books of translation published in Iran. She is an assistant professor of writing and literary arts at the University of Denver.