Modern Iranian Women’s Literature

Offering analyses of women’s literary production in Iran as well as the Iranian diaspora, this book moves beyond the examination of writing as an act of resistance and explores what women writers have contributed to the forms of literary expression.

While Iranian women’s literature predates the twentieth century, it became more visible in the twentieth- century. Flourishing in the wake of the 1979 revolution despite the restrictions imposed by the theocratic regime and a male-dominated field of production, it manifested explorations in genre and aesthetics. The mass migrations after the revolution gave rise to a sizeable community of Iranian women writers in diaspora who write about conditions of exile, displacement, nostalgia, and loss.
Through analysis of the work of writers such as Parvin ‘Etesami, Goli Taraqi, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, Simin Daneshvar, and Belqeys Soleimani, this book highlights the innovative ways in which these women writers have engaged with social and cultural restrictions and have contributed to the creation of new literary idiom and form.