Turning political writing into an art

The Orwell Prize will be awarded this evening and one of the following books will win:

Death to the Dictator!, Afsaneh Moqadem

Afsaneh Moqadem’s Death to the Dictator! is the fashionable choice for the award. Written by an Iranian dissident using a pseudonym to protect his anonymity, Death to the Dictator! is a fictionalisation of the failed Iranian revolution of 2009.

The book opens with faceless security operatives dumping Mohsen Abbaspour’s tortured body at a roundabout on the outskirts of a town. Moqadem weaves an intricate yarn. He examines the character of tyranny, recalling Solzenitsyn and Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet, particularly the scenes between Captain Merrick and Hari Kumar in The Jewel in the Crown.

Abbaspour is Moqadem’s finest achievement. He is a student of literature, not a gun-toting revolutionary, and his role in the pro-democracy demonstrations following Ahmadinejad’s perversion of the election unfolds. He is principled before he is angry, but above all he is alienated.