A Guerrilla Odyssey

Emerging in the early 1970s, the Organization of Iranian People's Fadai Guerrillas (OIPFG) became one of the most important secular left political organizations of Iran. Despite their lasting influence and the ways in which their efforts helped to shape the history of Iran for decades to come, little is known about the group. A Guerrilla Odyssey presents the first comprehensive examination of the rise and fall of the Fadai urban guerrilla movement in Iran.

Based on the exhaustive analysis of the published and unpublished works of the Fadai, as well archival material, and interviews with activists, the author demonstrates historically and sociologically the conditions that surrounded the debut and demise of urban guerrilla warfare that defined a decade of Iranian political life in the 1970s. Vahabzadeh offers a critique of various aspects of the Fadai's theories of national liberation in an attempt to reconsider the painful relationship between modernization, secularism, and democracy in contemporary Iran. The author also makes a compelling case to explain why older, revolutionary social movements of the 1960s and 1970s have transformed into the democratic, new social movements that emerged from the 1980s onwards, in the form of today's women's, student, and youth movements in Iran. A Guerilla Odyssey is a meticulous researched, engrossing narrative promising to be major contribution to the field of Iranian history.