Khatereha-ye parakandeh (scattered memoirs), from which “KhanehDi dar asman” (A Home in the Sky) has been selected and translated here, was the first original book of Goli Taraqqi (b. 1939) that appeared in Iran since the publication of her novel Khab-e zemestani (Winter Sleep) in 1973. (“Khaneh3i dar asman” itself had been published earlier in the November 1991 issue of the literary journal Kelk.) In 1979 Goli Taraqqi moved to France with her two sons and began a new phase of her literary career. A French translation of her short story “Bozorgbanu-ye ruh-e man” (The Great Lady of My Soul) won the Contre-Ciel literary award in 1985, and a year later, with her own cooperation, a French translation of Khab-e zemestani (Winter Sleep) was published in Paris.

Poems where a specifically iranian articulation of exile is expressed range over all the traditional genres and forms of Persian literature. Here, a ghazal, the most central lyrical genre, has been selected as the vehicle for such an articulation. Traditionally, the ghazal derives much of its unity from the mono-rhyme reflected in its form, often accompanied by a unique mood depicted through diverse and variegated images. Massoud Sepand's “The Air at Home” is one such poem, where the form has been utilized to communicate the poet's feelings about his homeland. While it opens with the image of the stifling air at home, the poem quickly turns to positing love for the country as a force that limits the ability of the speaker to overcome the exilic conditions.

In This Letter, Faraj Sarkuhi, Essayist And For Many Years Editor Of the prominent journal Adineh, tells the story of his macabre ordeal with the security forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The text reflects a repetitive and cyclical struggle to make sense of seemingly disjointed events and experiences, which are in the process of coming into a meaningful focus in the context of Sarkuhi's present pain, humiliation, and isolation. What is so gripping about the letter is the genuine voice of despair that reaches out to the reader through the labyrinth of words.

Naanaam's Poems Represent One Of The Most Subversive, Eclectic, and marginal styles of contemporary Persian poetry written by exiled Iranians. His knowledge of contemporary world poetry as well as classical Persian poetry provides him with solid grounds for a peculiar style that is at once thoughtful and playful, serious and sarcastic, engaged and apathetic, violent and kind. He jolts his readers out of routine readings in a variety of ways: he uses English words in the middle of Persian writings; he parodies the well-known lines by the dominant figures of contemporary Persian poetry; he splendidly highlights the ironies and contradictions of everyday life experiences that we normally tend to take for granted; he antagonizes and subverts all that is dominant, be it poetic style, linguistic norm, Logic, or Truth.