This study aims to examine the ways in which political issues, identities, and discourses are represented in Nūn wa al-Qalam by Jalal Al-e Ahmad. The central question concerns the types of identities and discourses that the novel foregrounds, marginalizes, or negates, as well as the linguistic and narrative mechanisms through which these representations are produced. To this end, the research employs Critical Discourse Analysis, drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Norman Fairclough and James Paul Gee. The findings indicate that the novel, by highlighting the rise and decline of leftist movements within the socio-political context of the author’s era, structurally links all forms of governance to violence, oppression, repression, corruption, exploitation and relations of domination. Within this framework, negative and dysfunctional identities—including state agents, Qalandars or leftists, and clerics aligned with power—appear more frequently than positive and constructive ones and are predominantly depicted as reproducers of hegemonic structures. The new educated middle class, as well as sages and scholars, are also severely criticized for their role in sustaining power relations. The discourse analysis demonstrates that Nun wa al-Qalam, through its simultaneous critique of monarchic-modernist discourse and Marxist leftist discourse, articulates a narrative that opposes the status quo and all forms of established authority. The novel’s dominant discourse is grounded in a notion of “return to the self” and a form of cultural nativism intertwined with Shi‘i elements such as resistance, uprising, martyrdom, and the messianic figure of the Twelfth Imam. Within this discourse, writing and the pen