Magical Realism and Palimpsest in The Mysteries of My Homeland

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Department of English Language and Literature, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Teharn, Iran

10.22059/jor.2026.405376.2763

Abstract

The Mysteries of My Homeland (Razhaye Sarzamin-e Man), a contemporary Iranian novel by Reza Baraheni, presents a fragmented narrative of historical events in Iran spanning the years before and after the Islamic Revolution. In this novel, the interplay between magical realism and memory/forgetting is prominently featured. While social revolution unfolds in the background of the events, the novel delves into the inner revolutions of individuals and employs magical realism and mechanisms of memory/forgetting to challenge official historiography and reconstruct collective memory. The author of the present article seeks to demonstrate, through an exploration of the magical realist elements in this work, how Baraheni’s novel juxtaposes magical elements—such as the “foreigner-killing wolf” and Raghieh’s prophecies—with narrative techniques to destabilize linear history and revive suppressed collective memories, while also questioning the possibility of accessing grand narratives by interweaving the micro-narratives of individuals. The most significant magical realist element enlisted in this regard is palimpsest as multi-perspectival history, which critically transcends the boundary between reality and fantasy. This article draws on Fredric Jameson’s ideas about magical realism and the relationship between humans, history, and representation to illustrate how The Mysteries of My Homeland proposes a novel logic for the relationship between humans and history, one that resonates with the subversive logic of magical realism.

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References

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Research in Contemporary World Literature
Volume 31, Issue 1
April 2026
Pages 15-35

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