Obeyd-e Zakani, who died in 1372, is among the great poets of Iran but little known in the West. This selection of his work is the first to be translated into English. Obeyd was a remarkable satirist and social critic who looked upon his world of extravagant indulgence and corruption with the censorious eyes of a Juvenal, and portrayed it with the cynicism and wit of a Voltaire, and the hilarious grotesqueness of a Rabelais. He used scathing stories and sardonic maxims to paint a world full of deceit, greed, lust, sycophancy, and perversion, where old values and virtues were scorned and extremes of wealth and poverty, violence and bloodshed were the order of the day.

At the close of the nineteenth century, modern ideas of democracy and equality were slowly beginning to take hold in Iran. Exposed to European ideas about law, equality, and education, upper- and middle-class men and women increasingly questioned traditional ideas about the role of women and their place in society. In apparent response to this emerging independence of women, an anonymous author penned The Education of Women, a small booklet published in 1889. This guide, aimed at husbands as much as wives, instructed women on how to behave toward their husbands, counseling them on proper dress, intimacy, and subservience. One woman, Bibi Khanom Astarabadi, took up the author’s chal­lenge and wrote a refutation of his arguments. An outspoken mother of seven, Astarabadi established the first school for girls in Tehran and often advocated for the rights of women. In The Vices of Men she details the flaws of men, offering a scathing diatribe on the nature of men’s behavior toward women. Astarabadi mixes the traditional florid style of the time with street Persian, slang words, and bawdy language. This new edition faith­fully preserves the style and irreverent tone of the essays. The two texts, together with an introduction and afterword situating both within the customs, language, and social life of Iran, offer a rare candid dialogue between men and women in late nineteenth-century Persia.

Forugh Farrokhzad was born in Tehran in 1935 and died in a car crash at the age of 32. During her short, tumultuous life she was married and divorced; had a son, who was taken away from her; had love affairs; made an award-winning documentary film; adopted a child from a leper colony; and published several collections of poetry. In her writing as well as her lifestyle, she challenged female stereotypes and shocked the establishment, but her talent was unmistakable. Fiercely honest, insightful, and often wonderfully lyrical, her work has earned her a secure place in the thousand-year tradition of illustrious Iranian poets. This revised and updated edition of "Another Birth and Other Poems, " includes an introduction, letters, interviews, a timeline of Forugh's life and creative work, two essays analyzing her finest poems, and the Persian text of the poems on facing pages. Forugh Farrokhzad's poetry is as poignant today as it was half a century ago, when it scandalized Iranian society. This book brings into perspective the full evolution of Forugh's work, from introspective reflections on womanhood, love, and religion to broader visions of modern society as a whole.