This volume contains the translation of the literary works of Shahrzad, an Iranian dancer, actor, ‎and writer, originally published in three different books before the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In ‎the 1960s and 70s, Shahrzad was known as a popular artist: she danced in clubs, acted in more ‎than sixteen movies, and directed the movie Maryam and Mani (1977). In addition to two ‎volumes of poetry, a book of prose and poetry, and a screenplay, she also published several ‎commentaries for film journals. After the Revolution, she was imprisoned and then homeless in ‎the streets of Tehran for a number of years. With the help of an arts guild and her friends, she now ‎lives in a small city in southern Iran.
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The poet's talent and the poems' power are reflected in the unusual metaphorical constructs and unique and sometimes unlikely images she portrays. Her verse generally features elusive and unconventional images and symbols as well as mystifying and subversive concepts. In most Persian verses of the political poetry of the decades before the 1979 Revolution, water, rain, and dew have a weighty presence, indicating hope and the coming of better times. Such hopes may be those of what some conceptualize as god's blessings (featured mostly in the classical period) or may be related to the desire to improve social and political situations (a subject more common in contemporary ideologically inspired literature). In Shahrzad's poetry, however, natural elements such as rain come close to their natural essence, that which gives life or revives. She assigns no particular political import; she simply asks for "one drop of dew" to enliven—to revive herself and the world. Her metaphors are the results of the juxtaposition of such elements, the constructed images. Such departure from convention and the tendency to depict the simple and the natural occur in all of her poems. Moreover, with a "small word," she shakes the whole world, and with "small acts of kindness," she performs the impossible act of washing "the wind, the rain, and the name." These images contain sobering expressions as well. "Washing a name" happens when a person behaves properly to eradicate the memories of previous wrongdoings. The meaning becomes clearer if we read the lines in the context of the accusations that were leveled against her, causing her to abandon her cinematic career. Moreover, her poems become the only place she talks about haunting memories, the assaults on her body, those that shaped the course of her tragic yet successful life.