Ali Alizadeh

Jeanne is a young woman from rural France. She's a knight who wears men's clothing. The English call her Joan of Arc. Jeanne has led France to victory in epic battles. She hears ghostly voices and has unspeakable desires. The English want to burn her. Her king has abandoned her. Her heart has been broken. Her heart cannot be burnt. This is her story, and the story of her beloved. Ali Alizadeh's novel The Last Days of Jeanne d'Arc is a provocative new portrait of the life of one of history's most fascinating figures. Countless books have been written about the young Frenchwoman who claimed to hear the voices of saints, led the armies of France in the war against England in the Middle Ages, and was captured and burnt for heresy by her enemies. Based on a rigorous study of the historical material, The Last Days of Jeanne d'Arc provides the first serious dramatisation of Jeanne's sexuality. Alizadeh uses an innovative storytelling technique that weaves together multiple narrative perspectives to tell the story of a courageous young woman who, driven by a passion for justice and forbidden desire, changes the course of Western history. Reviewed in the The Age here. Read the review in The Australian.

The Last Days of Jeanne D'Arc

John Kinsella

Edited and translated by the internationally renowned poet John Kinsella and the Iranian-born poet and translator Ali Alizadeh, Six Vowels and Twenty-three Consonants is a groundbreaking new collection of poems presenting the wealth of poetic voices from one of the world's most important literary cultures. The book covers poetry from the early Middle Ages to the Modernists and Postmodernists of the 20th and 21st centuries. No other culture in the world has produced such quantity and quality of mystical poetry and true spiritual vision as the Persian tradition. In this poetry there is an effulgence of meaning; nearly every word resonates with chords of allusion and multiple signification. Whether we read a modern poet or one of the classics, this resonance reaches back to the beginnings of the tradition, and it touches us today.

An Anthology of Persian Poetry from Rudaki to Langroodi

Six Vowels and Twenty-three Consonants

A vanished, tattered black and white photograph, taken in Tehran in 1946. The image of a sombre and inscrutable middle-aged man called Salman Fuladvand, a lieutenant and controversial police chief under Iran's second last king. It is the memory of this photograph that begins Ali Alizadeh's story of his grandfather Salman's life, spanning Salman's youthful devotion to the advancement of his country and the emancipation of Iranian women, his conflicts with the shahs, his wrongful imprisonment, and his eventual embracing of Sufi mysticism. Iran My Grandfather is a rare mix of narrative, memoir, history and personal exploration. It recounts Iran's journey from progressive idealism to the ravages of tyranny, imperialism and religious reaction. It is a testament to the mistakes of the past and the present, an examination of family and identity, and an interrogation of the meaning of home and belonging. As Alizadeh writes, this story is a thread to show the path out of the labyrinths'. Iran My Grandfather is a work of recovery, resistance, and affirmation. I think one can say without risk of hyperbole that it is one of the most remarkable texts ever to have been published in Australia.' John Kinsella

Ali Alizadeh

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