Chasm. Mist. Dark Song. Hour of Execution. Behind the Wall. These are just some of the poetic titles of Ahmad Shamlu (1925–2000) that together form the cipher to one of the most powerful figures in modern world literature.
 
Brought together here in translation for the first time, these selected works provide a gateway to the paradoxical imagination of an author who traverses immense distances of oblivion & light. On the one hand, Shamlu is known as a poet of night-raids & prison cells, dead-ends & burial orations, one for whom endlessly doomed horizons always keep him close to themes of martyrdom, fatality, rage, atrocity, & struggle.