The War Road was written by Mansour Anvari in fourteen volumes, ten of which are published, and the novel is supposed to be completed in twenty volumes. Not many works like this novel portray a thorough narration of Iran’s contemporary history from the 1940s until present time.Anvari starts his narration from 25th of August in 1941, which was the day Russians invaded Iran from the north east of Khorasan and Iran was occupied by the Allies. He goes on the story by telling the most prominent contemporary historical events in a long story form, narrating important incidents like; June 5th 1963 demonstrations, the clashes of Islamic groups, people’s demonstration against Pahlavi Regime, the events leading to the Islamic Revolution’s triumph in the last months and anti-revolution groups in Kurdistan, etc. The first seven volumes concentrate on the subsequent events after the occupation of the country by the Rus-sians, although the author expresses his view toward the other important contemporary incidents in other vol-umes. The protagonists of Anvari’s novel are two characters that play their roles artistically throughout the story. The first character is called Margan, who battles the Russians in Bajgiran Canyon for nine hours, and the oth-er character is a corporal called Seyed Reza Sharifi who takes a liking to a female officer working for the Rus-sian army. He eventually sets up her escape from the army and flees with her. Anvari has characterized his story in a way that his two main characters are present both physically and meta-phorically throughout the story. Margan is a ghost-like figure flying over the Russian soldiers, evoking the sense of death for them. He encounters the officer in a more palpable way and appears with a more acceptable character to do some actions, which makes it more tangible for the readers. Moreover, Anvari has created one hundred more characters, which enter the story in the proper time and situation. The most events narrated in the novel are real and documented; however, Anvari tries to narrate the historical reality in a story frame and focusing on the characters by using a variety of descriptions. Due to the fact, this book can be recognized as a glance of the incidents and events of fifty years of Iran’s contemporary history, which starts from Khora-san and ends there, and the name of the book itself is an irony representing the symbol that the war of maintain-ing Iran’s independence never stops and will go on.

Mansour Anvari (1955-Neyshapour) has worked on contemporary story-writing for several years, but he has become widely known only recently. Before the success of his novel, Anvari hadn’t tried to tell his life story but his career in writing spans to two decades. In spite of this, his works were not well- known due to the fact that he lives far from the capital. Eventually he achieved a huge success with the publication of The War Road, which helped him introduce his later works more efficiently.