1979 marks the year of the Shah’s fall in Iran. It is also the year of the Islamic revolution. The narrator takes this opportunity to wander around Tehran with Blondie playing in the background, in search of an underground evening or some other pleasant plan. Nothing seems to disturb his peaceful wandering. He eventually ends up in Tibet where, after being arrested by Chinese soldiers, he is sent to Lao Ga, where he might go hungry. The author of “End of the Party” uses his sharp pen to attack the West, ridiculing it through the eyes of the East, and paints a less than flattering picture of a humanity in disarray.
Critics’ opinions on “1979”: Johan Faerber: “They take a swipe at holidaying Europeans. It’s a critique of westernism, orientalism, of the way Westerners behave in Iran. There are haunting scenes, such as the party in Tehran, in a hashish plantation, with people more extravagant than the next. It brings to mind Bret Easton Ellis, with this very political and critical view. The proposed satire, you never know what to think of it, you can’t decide.”
Marie Sorbier: “Kracht manages to make his narrator completely blind and deaf to the changes taking place around him. Yet, we still understand that he is experiencing a revolution, with the Shah’s fall and Khomeini’s arrival. But the narrator, with his Berluti shoes, completely dandy, only cares about silks, sofas… All this political aspect, it’s on the side, not his issue.”
Johan Farber’s favorite “Belgazou”: “Mascare is a cabaret artist, who offers us Belgazou, a brief, dense text, a dazzling monologue of barely fifty pages that impresses lastingly with its powerful outburst. It’s as if it were a manifesto delving into Mascare’s personal history, that of a harki’s daughter questioning the place of immigrants in contemporary French society.”
