“Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal.”—Forugh Farrokhzad
All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh 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. It’s during the summer of 1950 that Forugh’s passion for poetry really takes flight—and that 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 grows only 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—Jasmin Darznik has written a haunting novel, using 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..
401 pages (February 2018)
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Jasmin Darznik reads from Song of a Captive Bird at The San Fransisco Public Library:
This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.
Title Read-alikes: In the City of Gold and Silver by Kenize Mourad; The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani; The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons by Goli Taraghi; The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant; The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer; The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman; The Book of V. by Anna Solomon; The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg; and The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta.
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