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?All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Iranian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel—gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother's walled garden, venturing to the forbidden rooftop to roughhouse with her three brothers, writing poems to impress her strict, disapproving father, and sneaking out to flirt with a teenage paramour over café glacé.
During the summer of 1950, Forugh's passion for poetry takes flight—and tradition seeks to clip her wings. Forced into a suffocating marriage, Forugh runs away and falls into an affair that fuels her desire to write and to achieve freedom and independence. Forugh's poems are considered both scandalous and brilliant ; she is heralded by some as a national treasure, vilified by others as a demon influenced by the West.
She perseveres, finding love with a notorious filmmaker and living by her own rules—at enormous cost. But the power of her writing only grows stronger amid the upheaval of the Iranian revolution. Inspired by Forugh Farrokhzad's verse, letters, films, and interviews—and including original translations of her poems—this haunting novel uses the lens of fiction to capture the tenacity, spirit, and conflicting desires of a brave woman who represents the birth of feminism in Iran—and who continues to inspire generations of women around the world.
Song of a Captive Bird : writing oneself out of reality
Jasmin Darznik's 'Song of a Captive Bird' is a remarkable biographical novel inspired by the extraordinary life of Forugh Farrokhzad (1934-1967), a poet and film maker in pre-revolutionary Iran. The author portrays Farrokhzad's struggle to achieve authenticity as a writer with considerable finesse-- and a high sense of paradox as well. For Forugh discovers the mind expanding possibilities of literature in her authoritarian father's library of classical Persian poetry which is the catalyst of her desire to become a successful published writer. A very haunting work of writing capturing a society in flux between the traditional constraints of a patriarchal society and the temptations of Western modernity with its promises of personal freedom for those like Farrokhzad willing to endure considerable sacrifices and ostracization.