Description: Explores Azeri Turkish literature to offer insights into the ideas of centralism, monolingualism and nationalism in twentieth-century Iran.
Brief description: Leila Rahimi Bahmany is a Guest Professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She earned her doctorate from the Free University of Berlin, specialising in modern literature of Iran and comparative literature. Her first book, Mirrors of Entrapment and Emancipation: Forugh Farrokhzad and Sylvia Plath (Leiden University Press, 2015) received the Latfifeh Yarshater Award.
Review Quotes: In this carefully researched and well-written study, Leila Rahimi Bahmany reveals the complex history of twentieth-century Azeri Turkish writing, showing how the Soviet occupation of Iranian Azerbaijan opened up new possibilities for the expression of individual and collective identity. Azeri Turkish Narratives in Twentieth-Century Iran will be of value to specialists in Middle Eastern Studies, illuminating the interplay of monolingualism and plurilingualism; to students of World Literature, highlighting the role of so-called 'minor literatures'; and to anyone sensitive to the intense and often fraught relationship of national identity and language.--Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Institute for Advanced Study