Azeri Turkish Narratives in Twentieth-Century IranResisting Monolingualism

Selected as the Honorable Mention for the 2026 Nemati Book Award

Explores Azeri Turkish literature to offer insights into the ideas of centralism, monolingualism and nationalism in twentieth-century Iran

• Presents the first comprehensive study of Azeri Turkish prose narratives in twentieth-century Iran
• Explores how monolingualism, centralism and linguistic marginalisation operate through memory narratives that challenge and subvert official, centre-generated historical accounts
• Demonstrates how oppressive power discourses paradoxically inspire the liberating force of narratives by turning to the suppressed language and the language of the suppressed
• Offers insights into the modes of being and lived experiences within a specific linguistic, cultural, and geographic context, providing a history and cultural understanding that diverges from top-down or centre-to-periphery models
• Advocates for vitalising Iranian literary studies by embracing linguistic and cultural diversity and by including the ‘small literatures’

Modern Azeri Turkish prose narratives emerged towards the end of the Second World War, a period marked by the rise of multiple hostile ideological trends – including Aryanism, centralism, nationalism and archaism – all seeking to eradicate the Azeri Turkish language. Azeri Turkish was framed as a linguistic threat to be eliminated as monolingualism, seen as a prerequisite for a unified nation-state, became one of the main state projects of the Pahlavis in their attempt to create a homogenised, Persianised Aryan nation. Yet, despite a century of systematic Persianisation, literature in Azeri Turkish not only endured but continues to thrive in Iran to this day.

This book introduces short stories, novels and memoirs in Azeri Turkish from the 1940s to the end of the twentieth century, situating them within the historical and political events of the time, from the rise of the Azerbaijan People’s Government to the Iranian Revolution and beyond. It analyses the authors' engagement with the questions of forced monolingualism, institutionalised assimilation policies and centre–periphery relations, revealing the dissident nature of this minority literature. It shows how the persistent marginalisation of Azeri Turkish literature, along with the constant revisitation of the region’s dark historical periods, has shaped much of this literature as trauma narratives. Finally, it advocates for vitalising Iranian literary studies by embracing linguistic and cultural diversity.