Review of Ghazal Mosadeq’s If:

Mosadeq’s pamphlet If posits and becomes the titular question. The text invokes Iran’s 20th-century history, heady with “ifs” — if the left-wing Mohammad Mosadeq, if the monarchist pro-Western Shah, if the Russian invasion or the Qajar dynasty — bereft of the implicit then, of an answer. A silence is put forth in its place. It becomes an outpouring of the many ferocious potentials of the territory, its people, its diaspora, the irresoluteness of it all, the poet’s position in London, far from yet within, embroiled. The review explores its use of the virgule to splinter the text, its relationship to the poet Bahar, and the current war the poem is published into, acknowledged and written into in the poet’s anti-afterword.

Link to If: https://tripwirejournal.com/2026/04/16/pamphlet-17-if-by-ghazal-mosadeq/