Song of a Captive Bird: A Novel

(Paperback)

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A spellbinding debut novel based on the life of the rebel poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied Iranian society to find her voice, and love-inspiring generations of women to come. Although she is told that daughters should be quiet and modest, young Forugh finds ways to rebel-gossiping with her sister in the rose garden, composing poems behind the closed doors of her bedroom, sneaking out with a teenage paramour to discuss books over a cafe glace. As a young woman in the 1950s, Forugh flees her forced marriage, returns to Tehran, and falls into a passionate affair. When her newfound freedom finds its voice on the page, her published poems-considered brilliant and utterly scandalous-polarize Iranian society. Unwilling to return to a traditional, expected life, Forugh continues to live by her own rules, finding love and success-but at enormous cost. This haunting novel-informed by Forugh's writings, films, and interviews-captures the tenacity, spirit, and conflicting desires of a rebel poet who, to this day, continues to inspire women around the world. Story Locale- Tehran, Iran in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s

Reviews

A complex and beautiful rendering of [a] vanished country and its scattered people, a reminder of the power and purpose of art, and an ode to female creativity under a patriarchy that repeatedly tries to snuff it out.The New York Times Book Review(Editors Choice)

If poetry is emotion rendered incendiary, then Forugh Farrokhzad was made of fire. . . . Song of a Captive Bird is an unsparing account of the necessity and consequences of speaking out.BookPage

Sometimes, simply choosing whom to love is a political act.Vogue

Forugh Farrokhzads short life brimmed with controversy and rebellion . . . .This feminist icon inspired Darzniks imaginative debut.Ms.

Sumptuously captures a fierce and turbulent life, as well as a vanished country swept away by revolution.Newsweek

A stunning and powerful debut . . . At a time when our country is at war with art and women, this courageous book is required reading.Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This

A thrilling and provocative portrait of a powerful woman set against a sweeping panorama of Iranian history.Kirkus Reviews

Written with the urgent tenderness of a love letter, this soaring novel is a heart-breaker and heart-mender at oncea gorgeous tribute to the brave and brilliant poet remembered in its pages.Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage and Silver Sparrow

These are times for stories that bring one culture nearer to another, and that is exactly what Jasmin Darznik has done, pulling close the hearts of girls and women and poets to tell Forugh Farrokhzads remarkable story.Laleh Khadivi, author of A Good Country

Farrokhzad is known as the Sylvia Plath of Iran, and the two poets were contemporaries, living lives at once starkly different and remarkably attuned, then dying young and tragically. Plaths renown is universal; Darzniks enthralling and illuminating novel will introduce Farrokhzad to a whole new world of readers.Booklist (starred review)

A beautiful writer! In elegant, intimate prose, Darznik portrays pre-Revolutionary Iran and a woman who transcended the prejudices of her time.Susan Cheever

Darzniks marvelous homage to Forugh captures the frustration and determination she must have felt to overcome the strictures of her environment, beautifully recreating her difficult path to fame.Publishers Weekly

Farrokhzads determination to live freely and authentically, and to express that determination in her art, proved unbearable to the fundamentalist state. Darznik brings her own poetic sensibility to bear on this tragic, but ultimately inspiring, act of creative remembrance.Jonathan Dee, author of The Locals

Alive and sensuous, Darzniks prose mirrors Forughs poetry, making no separation between life and work, leaving open and unguarded that door we so often find closed.Donia Bijan, author of The Last Days of Caf Leila

Author Bio

JASMIN DARZNIK was born in Tehran, Iran, and moved to America when she was five years old. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Good Daughter. Her work has been published in thirteen countries and recognized by the Steinbeck Fellows Program, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the William Saroyan International Prize. Her stories and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington College and a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University. Now a professor of literature and creative writing at California College of the Arts, she lives in Northern California.