Women in Modern Iranian Literature

Goli Taraghi, Visiting Lecturer, Iranian Studies Program, Stanford

Goli Taraghi is a writer of myriad talents. Whether contemplating the place of “the mythical mother of life” in human consciousness, or writing about the larger than life figure of her father—a real estate and publishing magnate, an Iranian Citizen Kane, in her words— whether describing the sad and satirical absurdities of her life in Islamic Iran or in secular Europe, she brings to her subject a sobering and searing honesty, and an acute awareness of the ironies of the human condition. In her work, the comic and the melancholic are inseparable. Human frailty is matched by the humanism evident in many of her characters' dispositions. In all she writes, facts of life and fictions of the mind, myths of the past and mundane realities of today cohere to create narratives that are, in the best traditions of Persian literature, at once simple and sophisticated, easy to enjoy and difficult to emulate.