Overview

Born in Tehran and now a member of the Swedish Academy, Jila Mossaed is one of the most distinctive poetic voices of exile and belonging. Having written in both Persian and Swedish, she brings to her Persian poetry a rare perspective on language and loss—illuminating the fragile threshold between silence and speech, home and displacement, memory and renewal. In these radiant translations, drawn from Mossaed’s eleven Persian collections, we enter a world where exile becomes a form of vision. The natural world—wind, sea, stone, and flame—mirrors the inner life of the poet, revealing how loss can sharpen perception and how solitude can become a dwelling place. Mossaed’s poetry moves through tenderness and clarity, sorrow and radiance, until longing itself becomes a kind of home. Mojdeh Bahar’s faithful and lyrical translations bring this extraordinary body of work into English for the first time, allowing readers to encounter a voice that bridges cultures, histories, and languages. The Dusk of Exile is a book about the endurance of the human spirit—an intimate and timeless testament to how poetry can transform displacement into light.

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9781949445961

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Reviews

“These poems are intensely personal, and the individual authenticity of their cry cannot be doubted, but in a time of so many diasporas, exiles, displaced persons, refugees, they convey the often unspoken experience of millions of our contemporaries. Mojdeh Bahar’s translations are beautifully and meticulously transparent to their Persian originals.” — Dick Davis, poet and translator of Shahnameh

Author Information

Jila Mossaed Estakhri (born 1948 in Tehran) is an Iranian-born Swedish poet and writer, and a member of the Swedish Academy. Living in Sweden since 1986, she writes in both Persian and Swedish and is widely recognized as one of the most distinctive poetic voices of exile and belonging. Her poetry explores themes of displacement, memory, and renewal, often weaving the natural world—wind, sea, stone, and flame—into the fabric of inner life. Mossaed’s work has been translated into English, French, Dutch, and Greek, and has received numerous honors, including the Prix Vénus Khoury-Ghata (2020) and the Prix Max-Jacob (2022). The Dusk of Exile introduces English readers to poems drawn from her eleven Persian-language collections. Mojdeh Bahar received her J.D. from University of Maryland Carey School of Law; her M.A. in French from NYU, and her B.S. in Chemistry and French from Dickinson College. Mojdeh has a deep interest in world literature including Persian Poetry. She has translated a selection of Shafi’i Kadkani’s nature poetry entitled Milkvetch and Violets, (Mage, 2021); selected and translated poems by 52 Iranian women poets entitled Song of the Ground Jay: Poems by Iranian Women, 1960-2022, (Mage, 2023); and selected and translated the poetry of 104 contemporary Iranian women poets entitled, Song of the Ground Jay, Expanded Edition (Gordyeh, 2023). Her translations have also appeared in Lyrikline and Stepaway, Loch Raven Review, and Women, Life, Freedom, a forthcoming anthology by Guernica Editions. Mojdeh has served as an executive in both public and not-for-profit sectors working at the cross section of technology, innovation, business, law and policy.

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