All through her childhood in 1950s Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest—but she likes gossiping, flirting, and writing poetry. Forced into a suffocating marriage, Forugh runs away and falls into an affair that fuels her desire to write and to achieve freedom and independence. Inspired by the real Forugh Farrokhzad's verse, letters, films, and interviews—and including original translations of her poems—this haunting novel uses the lens of fiction to trace the brief, momentous life of a woman who persevered, finding love with a notorious filmmaker and living by her own rules—at enormous cost.