Buzurg ʻAlavī: nivīsandah-i “sāntīmāntāl” yā rawshanʹandīsh

Muḥammad Bahārlū turns a searching critical eye on Bozorg ʻAlavī (1904-1997), one of the founding figures of modern Persian fiction and a member, with Jamālzādah, Hidāyat, and Chūbak, of the first generation to remake the Iranian short story and novel. The guiding question gives the book its subtitle: was ʻAlavī a sentimental writer, or a clear-sighted and enlightened mind? Drawing on the author's own interviews and correspondence with ʻAlavī in his Berlin years, on the writer's memoirs, and on a close reading of the fiction, Bahārlū traces a literary life shaped by the Constitutional movement, exile, political imprisonment, and decades abroad. He sets ʻAlavī's formation against his early immersion in Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and the European masters, and follows the emergence of a distinctive prose style. Rounding out the volume are a detailed chronology of ʻAlavī's life and a curated bibliography of writings about him, making this a compact but authoritative point of entry.