Review: Iranian Love Stories

Iranian Love Stories by Jane Deuxard (illustrated by Deloupy; published by graphic mundi in 2021)

I first spotted Iranian Love Stories for sale at the Small Press Expo (SPX). The cover caught my eye, but it was the publisher’s representative who informed me “Jane Deuxard” was actually a pseudonym used by two French reporters who went undercover to Iran so they could secretly interview young Iranians about their love lives in an oppressive, ever-vigilant regime.

The French reporters (an unnamed man and woman) had to pretend to be a married couple in order to enter Iran. They traveled around the country and interviewed Iranians in their 20s who were willing to speak about life under the current regime and their attempts to still have a love life. The authors conducted their interviews in Tehran, Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, Isfahan, Bandar Abbas, Yazd, Mashhad, Shiraz, and (I suspect) other locations not included in this book. The interviews are presented as 9 vignettes: 3 interviews with different women (including a divorcee), 3 interviews with different men, 1 interview with a pair of female friends, 1 interview with a male/female couple, and 1 interview with another male/female couple where the woman barely spoke. The interviews cut across different social strata (wealth vs. barely able to make ends meet) and perspectives (anti-regime and borderline pro-regime). Between these vignettes, the authors intersperse their own personal experiences traveling through Iran and trying to avoid getting in trouble. In one incident, the female reporter was berated for showing the skin on top of her foot in 104F weather!

I found this book captivating. The interviews themselves are intimate—both in terms of content and the secretive context in which they were conducted. It was fascinating to hear from the one couple who barely knew one another despite having dated for years (the woman had no idea how anti-feminist the man was!) and from the two friends who shared their own individual perspectives on being female in Iran. The interviews reveal the socio-religious challenges facing the divorcee who remarried to her current partner, as well as the well-off Iranian teacher who travels to Europe on the regular. Secret meetings in malls, only interacting with the other sex while attending university, waiting months to years just for a kiss, overbearing mother-in-laws, and constant surveillance by the police and the paramilitary Basij—all these things are normal for these young Iranians trying to have independent love lives like people normally do elsewhere in the world.

As for the graphic novel’s visuals, I find Deloupy’s use of lines and color well-balanced, with different color palettes indicating past or present as well as whether the story is part of a vignette or the reporters’ own experiences. I found the art immersive—detailed enough to keep me interested in the images, but not so overly-detailed that it distracted me from the story. I particularly enjoyed the visual metaphor of a black balloon with an ever-watching eye (reminiscent of the evil eye) to represent the Iranian surveillance state, which relies not on the police, military, and cameras, but also on volunteers willing (and even eager) to denounce their own friends and families to the government.

I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about love against all odds, modern Iran and its history, and subversion of an oppressive regime.