Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran

Forugh Farrokhzad was an Iranian poet and filmmaker who became a figure of revolt against patriarchal and cultural norms in the Iran of the 1960s. She died at 32. This study, now in a second edition, looks again at her work some fifty years after her death.

The book treats Farrokhzad as a woman caught between two pressures: long-held traditional practices on one side, and newly introduced modern social attitudes on the other. It follows how her poetry and her films broke with convention, and it asks what position she holds in Iran, both among modern Persian poets generally and as an Iranian woman writer.

The authors also look beyond Iran's borders. They trace her appeal in the Iranian diasporic imagination and consider the many translations of her poetry into English.

This is literary criticism and cultural biography, written as an introduction to her legacy for readers in the 21st century, including those new to her. The second edition adds two chapters. One covers a travelogue she wrote during her time in Italy. The other examines her influence on the Afghan poet Laila Sarahat Rowshani.