Affectionately known as Moh among colleagues and friends, Mohammad Reza Ghanoonpoarvar has been a prominent figure in the field of Persian language and literature for the past thirty years. He is credited with pioneering work in the interpretation and analysis of contemporary Iranian culture and creating a vast reserve of scholarship on many of its aspects including fiction, film, and culinary arts. This volume treats of a range of contemporary phenomena in Iranian and Persianist studies including the emerging trends in fiction and creative writing in light of vicissitudes in the social and political atmosphere of Iran, approaches to the publication of classical Persian literature in Central Asian republics, as well as developments in cultural mores and approaches to doctrinal issues. It is a tribute by some among Ghanoonparvar’s numberless admirers to mark the occasion of his recent retirement from the University of Texas as Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature.