TEHRAN – An Iranian troupe is performing a play named “The Unwomanly Face of War”  based on a book by Soviet writer Svetlana Alexievich of Belorussia at the Neauphle-le-Chateau Theater in Tehran.

The group directed by Neshat Mirmahdi gave its first performance on Thursday night of the play that will remain on stage through August 26.

The entire cast of the play is composed of Shaqayeq Behdinian, Suren Bayat, Mona Chamani, Danial Hosseini, Navid Khoddam-Abbasi, Sheida Shalalvand, Rojin Faturifar, Firuzeh Faqri, Neda Qahramanpur, Kowsar Kardan, Rabieh Mirzad, Atena Niknam, Fatemeh Valandyari, Helena Yazdanmehr, Sarvenaz Nankeli and Azadeh Sadiri.

The book, whose full title is “The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II”, was first published in 1983. A Persian translation by Abdolmajid Ahmadi was published in 2016 by Cheshmeh in Tehran.

The book was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, the Guardian, NPR, the Economist,  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and several other newspapers.

For more than three decades, Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her invention of “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions… a history of the soul.”

In “The Unwomanly Face of War”, Alexievich chronicles the experiences of the Soviet women who fought on the front lines, on the home front, and in the occupied territories. 

These women – more than a million in total – were nurses and doctors, pilots, tank drivers, machine-gunners, and snipers. They battled alongside men, and yet, after the victory, their efforts and sacrifices were forgotten.

Alexievich traveled thousands of miles and visited more than a hundred towns to record these women’s stories. Together, this symphony of voices reveals a different aspect of the war – the everyday details of life in combat left out of the official histories.

Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, “The Unwomanly Face of War” is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war. 

Photo: A scene from the play “The Unwomanly Face of War” at the Neauphle-le-Chateau Theater in Tehran. 

MMS/YAW