Forthcoming Series: The Ruzbeh Library - Critical Editions of Modern Iranian Fiction
Edited by Omid Azadibougar, Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam, Amy Motlagh, and Narsin Rahimieh
The Ruzbeh Library brings a modern Iranian literary, cultural history to global readers through annotated English translations of modern Iranian fiction. Defined by formal innovations and thematic diversity, this rich literary tradition has remained under-read due to censorship at home, as well as linguistic barriers and limited dissemination abroad.
Included are canonical, counter-canonical, experimental, and banned works that are selected for their literary significance, highlighting aesthetic modernization and resistance to political and cultural repression.
Each volume provides scholarly annotations and contextual notes to deepen understanding of historical, thematic, and formal dimensions that support informed reading. The series foregrounds shared themes that connect modern Iranian fiction to universal human concerns that resonate with readers all over the world and serves both general readers and academic audiences.
For communications in relation to this series, be welcome to contact the publisher at BRILL, Masja Horn.
ISSN: 3117-826X
Series Editor
- Omid Azadibougar, independent scholar and translator, Iran
Editorial Board
- Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam, independent scholar, Belgium
- Amy Motlagh, UC Davis, California, USA
- Narsin Rahimieh, University of California, Irvine, USA
Biographical Information
Omid Azadibougar is a translator and literary comparatist. He is the author of The Persian Novel: Ideology, Fiction and Form in the Periphery (2014) and World Literature and Hedayat's Poetics of Modernity (2022), a co-editor of Persian Literature as World Literature (2021) and The Routledge Companion to Global Comparative Literature (2025). His research examines modern Persian literature in contemporary world literature and the legacies of Eurocentrism.
Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam is an independent scholar whose work examines literary translation, book diplomacy, and the cultural Cold War. He holds a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies and has held research fellowships at KU Leuven and Leiden University.
Amy Motlagh is an associate professor of Comparative Literature and Middle East/South Asia Studies as well as the inaugural Bita Daryabari Presidential Chair in Persian Language and Literature at UC Davis. She was trained at Princeton University as a Persianist and comparatist, and spent the first decade of her academic career at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Her publications include Burying the Beloved: Realism and Reform in Modern Iran (2012) and Colorblind: Racial Thinking and Cultural Production in Iran and the Diaspora (2026). Motlagh is also the translator of The Space Between Us (Yek ruz mandeh beh ‘ayd-e pak) by Zoya Pirzad, recognized by World Literature Today as a notable translation.
Nasrin Rahimieh is Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities in the Department of Comparative Literature and Associate Dean for Academic Personnel in the School of Humanities at UC Irvine. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Iranian Studies. Her work focuses on modern Persian literature, contemporary Iranian women’s writing, and post-revolution Iranian cinema.