The True Dream

The True Dream is a Persian satirical drama set in Isfahan in the lead up to Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911. This book has the Persian and English translation on facing pages. The introduction presents brief biographies of the authors – who wrote anonymously, but were all executed. One of the authors was the father of Mohammad-Ali Jamâlzâdeh, a pioneer of modern Persian fiction, and The True Dream was one of the first dramas, in European style, to be written in Persian. The book shows that today’s struggle for a modern society began more than a century ago, and then and now pivots on the role of the Islamic clerics (the ulama).