Shirin and Farhad, the Salt Man is a novella in verse by Nilofar Shidmehr. This book is forthcoming by Asemana Books in February 2027.
Shirin and Farhad, the Salt Man is a novella in verse that reimagines one of Persian literature’s most enduring epics through the eyes of a contemporary Iranian woman.
Born in Kermanshah before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Shirin grows up haunted by the legendary Princess Shirin of Nezami’s Khosrow and Shirin. At first she tries to inhabit the ancient story, only to discover that myths—like the society around her—have already assigned her a role. Refusing the script written for her, she begins to imagine another possibility.
Her unlikely companion is the Salt Man, a 1,700-year-old mummy preserved by salt and housed in Tehran’s National Museum. As history, legend, and imagination converge, the Salt Man becomes a contemporary Farhad, the forgotten lover of Persian myth, and together they cross the boundaries between archaeology and desire, memory and invention.
Rooted in Persian literary tradition yet strikingly contemporary, Shirin and Salt Man joins a growing body of literature that reimagines ancient myths through fresh voices. Blending lyric poetry with narrative, archaeology with imagination, and history with myth, it invites readers to see a familiar story from an unexpected perspective. Inventive, engaging, and profound, the novella the enduring human impulse to reclaim the stories that shape our lives.
