Reviews and Perspectives

At the farewell ceremony, Nastin Javadi spoke of a family life shaped by decades of shared cultural work and of the friends who supported the family during Mojabi’s illness. Read the summary on the memorial page.

Poopak Mojabi explained that she chose to read her father’s poems rather than give a speech, and recalled assembling New Love Poems around the themes of beloved, homeland and lost friends. Read the summary on the memorial page.

Alami remembered the home Mojabi and Nastin opened to writers and young people as an informal place for reading, conversation and encounters across generations. Read the summary on the memorial page.

Shargh Daily’s tribute links the news of Mojabi’s death to a review of several decades of cultural work, bringing together poetry, fiction, journalism, satire, painting and art criticism. Read the summary on the memorial page.

Shima Bahramand reads the exhibition “White Nights of the Hospital and Me” alongside Mojabi’s literary work. Referring to the stories “The Apparatus” and “Death in the Skull” from From Heart to Paper, she considers how artistic creation engages with collective experience, history and social reality. Her essay emphasizes Mojabi’s continuing creativity and literature’s capacity to look beyond the everyday.

Summary of the review. Source: Shargh Daily — read the original.

Writing for Payam-e Ma, Zohreh Maddah treats the republication of Night of the Locust as an opportunity to revisit Mojabi’s fiction. Her review discusses the novel’s nightmarish atmosphere, its blending of reality and imagination, and the place of fear and violence in its characters’ lives. She considers why the work can still speak to contemporary readers. The new edition was published in 1404 (2025–26) by Vazh-e Donya in 196 pages.

Summary of the review. Source: Payam-e Ma — read the original.

Zeynab Kazemkhah reports on the launch of the novel’s new edition, published by Vazh-e Donya after 35 years. Mahmoud Dowlatabadi discusses the arrangement of narrative fragments and the novel’s view of war. Ahmadreza Masoudinia reflects on its collage form, dark humour and surreal atmosphere; Ali Shorouqi considers its non-linear interplay of memory, history and narration; Mahsa Mohebali addresses the fit between the experience of war and the novel’s fractured form. Mojabi also speaks about the difficulties of publication and his continuing work.

Summary of the review and event report. Source: Khabar Online; report by Zeynab Kazemkhah, photograph by Masoumeh Roshani. Read the original.

On the occasion of an exhibition of forty works by Alireza Espahbod at Sohrab Gallery, Mojabi reflects on his acquaintance with the artist and his lasting contribution to Iranian art. He describes Espahbod as an important figure in the history of modern Iranian painting and discusses the force and distinctiveness of his visual language.

Source: Honar Online. This English summary is based on the Persian entry.

Mojabi reads Hekmat’s film as a clear-eyed, humane portrait of young people facing blocked paths, unemployment and social restrictions. He praises its independent, low-budget production and its refusal to offer either an anaesthetic lullaby or a combative slogan. The film’s characters keep moving, imagining a life with equal rights and ordinary happiness despite repeated setbacks.

Source: Mojabi’s Persian commentary in the archive.

Homayoun Aliabadi’s essay, published with the release of a recognition book on Mojabi compiled by Asiyeh Javadi (Nastin), focuses on poetry within Mojabi’s wide-ranging career. The book offers a way to revisit his works and critical responses by writers including Kazem Sadat Ashkouri, Hafez Mousavi, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, Reza Baraheni, Ahmad Shamlou and Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou. Aliabadi considers how Mojabi’s literary and visual-art experiences inform his poetry.

Summary of the review. Source: Honar Online — read the original.

Hamidreza Omidi-Server introduces the recognition book compiled by Asiyeh Javadi (Nastin) as a guide to different aspects of Mojabi’s career. He notes its treatment of humour in Mojabi’s work, a chronology, selected literary and visual-art works, writings by others and family letters. In his view, the compiler’s close knowledge of Mojabi’s life and work, along with revisions made for the new edition, are among the book’s strengths.

Summary of the review. Source: Ketab News, republished from Alef. Read the original.

This review considers Mojabi’s novel In This Asylum and a traditional family’s encounter with a changing world. It highlights the novel’s attention to the body and physical experience, and its insertion of historical and literary texts into the narrative, placing present-day events in a longer historical frame. The 303-page novel was published by Qoqnoos.

Summary of the review. Source: IRNA, republished by Etemad Online — read the original.

Remembering the actor after his death, Mojabi traces Entezami’s journey from theatre to cinema and recalls his performances, their friendship and trips together. He celebrates Entezami’s comic genius and argues that his full artistic range was never given room to appear in a culture constrained by rigid forms.

This English summary is based on Mojabi’s Persian remembrance.

In this long essay for Sazandegi, Mehdi Yazdani-Khorram presents Mojabi as a writer, poet, novelist, art critic and journalist whose work remained attentive to history. He emphasizes Mojabi’s measured response to political fervour, his resistance to slogans and his effort to understand how power, society and freedom operate. The essay also points to Mojabi’s persistence through censorship and to his openness to younger generations of writers. It portrays historical reflection, rather than symbolic posturing, as central to his intellectual character.

Source credited in the Persian archive: Sazandegi, 22 Mordad 1397, pp. 14–15. The original article is reproduced in the Persian entry.

In an interview with Shargh, Asiyeh Javadi (Nastin) speaks about living alongside Mojabi for five decades and reading his work. She describes her research book In the Climate of Presence with Javad Mojabi, which traces recurring signs in his novels—including the unseen, humour, power, identity and shadow—and discusses them across several years of study.

Source: Shargh Daily — read the original.

In this elegy, Mojabi mourns the departure of philosopher Dariush Shayegan and the loss of a singular intellectual presence. He describes Shayegan’s world as one of culture, thought and boundless presence, and imagines mirrors carrying his light forward into the future.

Source: Bokhara magazine; written for the Writers’ Quarter. This English summary is based on the Persian entry.

This illustrated Halazoon essay portrays Mojabi as a major writer of thoughtful satire. It gathers drawings and portraits of him by Iranian artists and pairs them with reflections on satire, language and social reality. The text stresses that, for Mojabi, satire does not offer a ready-made solution or simply entertain: it reveals habits, hypocrisy and the bitter contradictions of everyday life.

Summary of the essay. Source: Halazoon Magazine — read the original.

This illustrated profile in Halazoon recalls the friendship between Mojabi and cartoonist Ardeshir Mohassess and Mojabi’s writing on Iranian artists. It presents Mohassess as a defining figure in modern Iranian cartooning and discusses the book Unavoidable Resemblances, Mojabi’s study of the artist, later revised with Asiyeh Javadi. The essay also reflects on their views of reality, social conventions and satire.

Summary of the profile. Source: Halazoon Magazine — read the original.

In a personal reflection written after a commemorative tile was installed at the entrance to Mojabi’s home, poet and journalist Asiyeh Amini recalls a telephone conversation with Mojabi and Nastin. She describes the home as a place of warmth, conversation, books and artistic memory, and reflects on the couple’s longstanding commitment to culture and freedom of thought. She also records Mojabi’s view that government should support culture without intervening in it.

Source information and the full Persian text are preserved in the Persian archive entry.

Ebrahim Nabavi introduces Mojabi as one of the early voices of modern Iranian satire, active since the 1960s, while noting that satire is only one part of a career that also includes poetry, fiction, novels and art criticism. He describes Mojabi’s satire as rooted in the bitterness of reality, uncertainty about language and human communication, and resistance to ideological confinement. The essay also discusses Mojabi’s forms—from short prose and dialogue to literary satire—and places his work in the lineage of Ubayd Zakani.

Summary of the essay. Source: Halazoon Magazine — read the original.

At the unveiling of Ghasemizadeh’s collection of ink portraits, Mojabi praises the artist for honouring generations of Iranian poets, writers and musicians. He describes remembering earlier artists, engaging with contemporaries and encouraging younger artists as part of an open, generous cultural tradition—one based on exchange rather than self-regard or narrow loyalties.

This English summary is based on Mojabi’s Persian remarks at the book launch.

At the launch of The Shadow of My Grandfather, Mojabi describes the human being as the centre of Pezeshknia’s work: its engagement with life and death and with the suffering of people in poverty. He argues that Pezeshknia pursued these concerns consistently and was overlooked partly because he did not promote himself and because some works sent to Paris never returned.

This English summary is based on Mojabi’s remarks at the book launch.

Critic Abdolali Dastgheib observes that Mojabi brings humour and seriousness, playfulness and sorrow, comedy and lament together. His work portrays the responses of people—especially the middle classes—as they confront a relentless succession of events.

Source credited in the Persian archive: Payam-e Azadi.

Mojabi compares Mohassess with the pathbreaking writers Nima Yushij and Sadegh Hedayat, especially in the courage to confront society’s old wounds. He sees Mohassess’s satire as a sharp act of recognition: it does not preach or entertain for its own sake, but asks people to look honestly at what they have done to themselves and to one another.

Source: Mojabi, Unavoidable Resemblances (Tehran: Cheshmeh, 1386), p. 122. Exact publication day not stated.

Seyyed Ali Salehi finds a strong mental, thematic and linguistic continuity among Mojabi’s short poems. He describes their exuberance as a humane answer to collective depression and argues that lasting poetry depends on narrative. He also highlights Mojabi’s use of images that move between the external world and inner experience.

Source credited in the Persian archive: Daftar-e Honar, no. 17.

Omran Salahi lists the many roles Mojabi has taken on—poet, satirist, painter, cartoonist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, translator, critic, journalist and researcher—and emphasizes his lasting contribution to Iranian arts and letters. Salahi also recalls that Mojabi encouraged his own satirical writing and chose the title for one of his books.

Source credited in the Persian archive: Daftar-e Honar, no. 17.

Poet Manouchehr Atashi attributes the expansive movement of Mojabi’s imagination to his active, fluid mind and deep knowledge of art and writing. Discussing A Long Poem of Reflection, he notes that its language carries thought throughout, linking the present with inherited cultural memory. He particularly values the way myth and contemporary life exchange places without becoming abstract.

Source credited in the Persian archive: Daftar-e Honar, no. 17, special issue on Javad Mojabi.

Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou asks what Mojabi’s many books have added to contemporary Iranian literature. He places Mojabi within the modern literary movement shaped by Nima Yushij and Sadegh Hedayat, emphasizing both his distinctive voice and his willingness to experiment. In poetry, Sepanlou traces a path from Nima-like forms toward rhythmic prose poetry.

Source credited in the Persian archive: a review session organized by Karavan Publishing at the Andishehsazan Hall.

Mahmoud Dowlatabadi remarks on the breadth of Mojabi’s cultural work, spanning poetry, short fiction, novels, satire, drama and caricature. He also singles out Mojabi’s unusual optimism and his ability to turn life’s pressures into humour. Dowlatabadi recalls a young reader’s memorable summary of Mojabi’s outlook: everyday life itself can be beautiful.

Source credited in the Persian archive: remarks at the 17th Tehran International Book Fair.

Reza Baraheni describes witnessing Mojabi’s poetic development, from early simplicity to complex metres and a sustained engagement with history. He sees Mojabi’s poetry as bringing cultural places and sensibilities into conversation and linking individual work to a collective poetic unconscious. Baraheni also calls him a principled example of the writer’s independence in Iran.

Source credited in the Persian archive: a lecture at the University of Toronto.

In a letter later included in Remembering Certain People, Simin Behbahani responds to Mojabi’s poem about Bam. She writes of grief, poverty and the power of poetry to give language to suffering, drawing attention to Mojabi’s vivid imagery and his ability to make social hardship perceptible through carefully shaped words.

Source credited in the Persian archive: a letter later published in Remembering Certain People.

Poet and critic Kazem Sadat Ashkouri reads Mojabi’s poetry, including its love poems, as socially engaged. He notes the distinctive humour in some poems and argues that satire can give a poet room to think and speak freely. In his view, such writing depends on a strong and independent vision.

Source credited in the Persian archive: With the Artists, by Kazem Sadat Ashkouri.

Ahmad Shamlou says he already knew Mojabi’s writing and praises its burning satire: language compressed into a narrow form that turns ideas into something with the force of a projectile. He also notes Mojabi’s awareness of his own craft.

Source credited in the Persian archive: Keyhan.

In this affectionate letter, poet Esmail Khoei addresses Mojabi as a poet, novelist, literary critic and satirist, but above all as a generous fellow writer. He praises Mojabi’s ability to judge literature by enduring artistic standards rather than by personal friendships or rivalries, and also acknowledges his skill as a painter.

Source credited in the Persian archive: Daftar-e Honar, no. 17, edited by Bijan Asadi-Pour.

At a roundtable on Mojabi’s poetry, Shams Langeroudi praises the atmosphere of the later poems, especially those written in London. He values their philosophical meditations as poetry, comparing their reflective quality with the work of Rumi, Hafez and Fernando Pessoa, while stressing his personal response rather than making a general claim about genre.

Source credited in the Persian archive: a poetry roundtable in Daftar-e Honar, no. 17.

Hafez Mousavi says Mojabi’s poetry is not immediately easy to grasp and rewards careful attention. Its rhythm may first draw the reader in, but its complex thought and frequent shifts can make the connections difficult to follow, particularly in the long poems.

Source credited in the Persian archive: a poetry roundtable in Daftar-e Honar, no. 17.

Mojabi congratulates Farhadi on the international recognition of his peace-minded cinema. He writes that the film’s message brought joy to people in Iran and around the world, and presents Iranian culture as aligned with reason, tolerance, love, beauty and human solidarity.

This English summary is based on Mojabi’s Persian congratulatory message. The archive gives the occasion but no separate publication date.

Mojabi remembers Behbahani as a lasting voice in Iran’s collective memory and a renewing force in Persian lyric poetry. He honours her empathy, courage and humane vision, and reflects on how she made the classical ghazal speak to modern life. Her physical absence, he writes, leaves a deep loss, while her poetry remains fully present.

The Persian archive entry does not state a publication date.

Mojabi describes Vossough Ahmadi as an artist who observes nature closely and transforms what he sees into lasting visual memory. He notes the contrast between the grief and protest in the artist’s poetry and the gentler atmosphere of his paintings, which invite viewers to share in the beauty he has absorbed. Mojabi also recognizes his contribution to sustaining watercolor painting in Iran.

Source: Mehr News Agency, as credited in the Persian archive. The archive entry does not state the article’s date.

In this reflection on three influential artists, Mojabi recognizes the enduring force of Ahmad Shamloo’s poetry, Mohammad-Reza Shajarian’s music and Abbas Kiarostami’s work across visual art and cinema. He regards their ability to shape cultural memory and open new artistic paths as a source of lasting influence.

The Persian archive entry does not state a publication date.

Mojabi praises Kayhan Kalhor for bringing the kamancheh into an independent musical voice, beyond the long dominance of poetry and song over instrumental performance. He hears in Kalhor’s playing both the historical grief of the Kurdish people and the changing experiences of Iran: tragedy and comedy, loss and renewal, intimate tenderness and collective struggle.

The Persian archive entry does not state a publication date.