Novel
The School Principal
مدیر مدرسه
Jalal Al-e Ahmad · 1958
Synopsis
Weary of the classroom, a schoolteacher obtains his appointment as head of a new school on the outskirts of Tehran, housed in a building that a speculator has leased to the Ministry of Education for twenty-five years in order to attract residents. There is no running water, the teachers are a mixed lot, and the caretaker is better paid than the most senior of them. The principal wants to do well without getting too involved, obtains shoes for the poor pupils from well-off families, and sees one teacher arrested for his military service and another knocked down by an American's car.
Context
The material comes from the profession: the author, a teacher, had known this world, and the narrator is barely disguised. The book, published in Tehran in 1958, struck readers by an uncompromising realism and a direct, familiar prose, and was reprinted three times before the revolution, which was rare. John K. Newton translated it into English in 1974, with an introduction by Michael Hillmann; another translation appeared in New Delhi in 1986. Four years after this narrative, the author published the essay on “Westoxification” that made his reputation.
Who it is for
About one hundred and forty pages in the English translation, in everyday Persian. It helps to know that the narrator, ironic and disenchanted, judges everyone, himself included.
Prizes and reception
The most read and most esteemed of its author's novels, whose fame nevertheless rests chiefly on his essays.