Description
Hamid Shokat’s extensive biography of Bakhtiar is a significant contribution to the political history of Iran after WWII. Bakhtiar’s long presence on Iran’s political stage, as a prominent member of the opposition to the Shah, his brief tenure as the last prime minister of Iran before the establishment of the Islamic Republic, and his subsequent high-profile opposition in exile, and his assassination in 1991 by the agents of that regime, provide an extraordinary lens through which to examine Iranian politics and society during that period. Shokat has consulted an extensive range of primary and secondary sources, many of them previously unexamined, in Persian, English, French, and German, in various national archives. He has also interviewed various political personalities including Bakhtiar’s relatives and associates. This unprecedented account of Bakhtiar’s life and the changing Iranian political milieus he lived through is a work of immense historical achievement and significance.
M. R. GHANOONPARVAR is Professor of Persian and Comparative Literature and Persian Language at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published widely on Persian literature and culture in both English and Persian and is also the author of Prophets of Doom: Literature as a Socio-Political Phenomenon in Modern Iran; In a Persian Mirror: Images of the West and Westerners in Iranian Fiction; Translating the Garden; Reading Chubak; and Persian Cuisine: Traditional, Regional and Modern Foods. His translations include Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s By the Pen, Sadeq Chubak’s The Patient Stone, Simin Daneshvar’s Savushun, and Sadeq Hedayat’s The Myth of Creation and his edited volumes include Iranian Drama: An Anthology; In Transition: Essays on Culture and Identity in Middle Eastern Societies; Gholamhoseyn Sa’edi’s Othello in Wonderland and Mirror-Polishing Storytellers; and Moniru Ravanipur’s Satan Stones and Kanizu. 
