Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran - 2nd Edition by Dominic Parviz Brookshaw & Nasrin Rahimieh (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The pioneering Iranian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad was an iconic figure in her own day and has come to represent the spirit of revolt against patriarchal and cultural norms in 1960s Iran. Five decades after her tragic death at the age of 32, Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran brings her ground-breaking work into new focus. During her lifetime Farrokhzad embodied the vexed predicament of the contemporary Iranian woman, at once subjected to long-held traditional practices and influenced by newly introduced modern social sensibilities. Highlighting her literary and cinematic innovation, this volume examines the unique place Farrokhzad occupies in Iran, both among modern Persian poets in general and as an Iranian woman writer in particular. The authors also explore Farrokhzad's appeal outside Iran in the Iranian diasporic imagination and through the numerous translations of her poetry into English. It is a fitting and authoritative tribute to the work of a remarkable woman which will introduce and explain her legacy for a 21st-century audience.
This second edition includes two new chapters which explore a travelogue Farrokhzad wrote during her time in Italy, and an examination of Farrokhzad's influence on the writings of the Afghan female poet Laila Sarahat Rowshani.

Review Quotes

"The epitome of what the Islamic Republic wanted to eradicate, Farrokhzad is now the Iranian equivalent of a rock star." --Washington Post

"Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran sets in every way a new milestone in the study and understanding of this extraordinary poet. This volume is now clearly the single most important critical study of Farrokhzad in English, and can be warmly recommended to anyone with an interest in Persian poetry, intellectual history of Iran, and Iranian women" --Franklin Lewis, Associate Professor of Persian, University of Chicago

"Nearly half a century after her death, neither a biography nor a critical study of her poems has appeared. In the light of this situation, everyone who has read Farrokhzad or read about her will welcome the proposed volume" --Michael Craig Hillman, Professor of Persian, University of Texas, Austin

"Brookshaw's and Rahimieh's multi-faceted collection of essays remains the essential English-language portal into an understanding of Forough Farrokhzad's life, historical context, and her cinematic and poetic work. As a global icon for those seeking to love, live, and work freely, Farrokhzad continues to inspire individuals inside Iran and across the globe. This expanded edition includes important new essays exploring Farrokhzad's time in Europe, a period crucial to her artistic development, and also the work of Afghan poet Layla Sarahat Rowshani, one of Farrokhzad's gifted heirs." --Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., translator of Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season: Selected Poems of Forough Farrokhzad (New Directions, 2022), USA

About the Author

Dominic Parviz Brookshaw is Professor of Persian Literature and Iranian Culture at the University of Oxford, UK and Senior Research Fellow in Persian at Wadham College, Oxford, UK. He has published widely on premodern Persian lyric poetry, women writers of the Qajar era, and twentieth-century Iranian poets. His most recent book, Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance, and Patronage in Fourteenth-century Iran (I.B. Tauris, 2019), won the Saidi-Sirjani Book Award in 2020.

Nasrin Rahimieh is Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, USA. Her teaching and research are focused on modern Persian literature, the literature of Iranian exile and diaspora, contemporary Iranian women's writing, and post revolutionary Iranian cinema. Among her publications are Iranian Culture: Representation and Identity (2015), Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural History (2001), the English translation of the late Taghi Modarressi's last novel, The Virgin of Solitude (2008), and Oriental Responses to the West (1990).