The Colonel

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In the original Persian, the title of the book is Kolonel, from the French. There are two colonels confronting the reader in this book: the nameless colonel of the title and his alter ego in the photograph. Both are referred to as Kolonel. The Persian for ‘colonel’ is sarhang, but there was one colonel who was always known as Kolonel. This was Mohammad-Taqi Khan Pesyan who, in recognition for his training in Europe, was given the nickname Kolonel. Any educated Iranian would know who this was. His story is in the Glossary. To help the reader distinguish between the two colonels, I have referred to Pesyan as ‘The Colonel’, while the protagonist remains in lower case.

Dowlatabadi’s language shatters the Persian literary conventions. It is rough and ready, the language of the street and the barrack room. Like the great 11th century Persian epic Shahnameh, it avoids the use of Arabic words imported into Persian. In an effort to reproduce this in English I have tried to use Anglo-Saxon words in preference to Latin.

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