Modern Iranian literature is less than a hundred years old.

• It can be said that fiction story writing became popular in the 20th century with Yakī būd, yakī nabūd (Once Upon a Time), published in 1921 by Mohammed Ali Jamalzadeh and later his Westoxification along with The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat. Followed by Sadegh Chubak, Bozorg Alavi, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, and Ebrahim Golestan. And novels such as Savushun by Simin Daneshvar, Shāzdeh Efitejāb/the prince by Houshang Golshiri, Missing Soluch & Kalīdar by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, Iraj Pezeshkzad’s My Uncle Napoleon, and Shahrnoush Parsipour’s novella Zanān bidūn-i mardān (Women Without Men), are among the most notable works published before 1979. Later around 1997 story telling took life again, with authors like Moniro Ravanipour, Zoya Pirzad, Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, followed by a myriad of new writers, many of which are first time women writers like Fariba Vafi.
• Modern poetry started with Nima Yushij (1895-1960); and was followed by Ahmad Shamlu, Forough Farrokhzad, Mehdi Akhvan-e Sales, and Nader Naderpour, Fereydoun Moushiri; Sohrab Sepehri, Simin Behbehani, Hamid Mosadegh…