This poetical work in Persian language by Behrooz Ghorbanian, is a critical dialogue with the Iranian culture caught on the cross roads of modernity and tradition. A culture that is nostalgically romanticizing its past glories in literature, politics, and religion. All the while, technologically advancing to challenge the West’s centuries old domination of the Middle East. The poems dwell and find their content in the pathological space of the resulting schizophrenia thus imposed both from within and from without. Aware of its own problematic immigrant status, the work is highly critical of romantic escapism of the culture to the traditional forms of representations, and its lazy slumber in a deadly nostalgia. The poems are equally suspicious of the Iranian communities outside of Iran, as they exhibit the same dispositions. The work is also derisive of the West’s interventions that have been undermining the economic and political developments of the nation for decades.
Motadan Omid is available at Amazon.