Why did Mohammed Ali Jamalzadeh’s Once Upon a Time become important in modern Persian prose?

Mohammed Ali Jamalzadeh’s collection Once Upon a Time (Yakī būd, yakī nabūd), published in 1921, is considered a landmark in Persian literature because it laid the foundation for modern Persian prose.12

Its importance stems from several key innovations:

• Stylistic Shift: The work marked a complete break from the traditional, inflated, and pompous prose styles that had previously dominated the field. Jamalzadeh introduced a modern, direct diction that utilized colloquial Persian, making literature more accessible.31
• Realistic Narrative: It served as a foundational text for realistic prose narrative, a genre that lacked a precedent in the classical Persian tradition.2
• Social Criticism: The collection was highly influential for its outspoken, satiric criticism of contemporary Iranian society and values, which challenged the status quo and sparked significant debate among intellectuals and conservatives alike.13
• Literary Manifesto: The collection’s introduction functioned as a powerful manifesto, in which Jamalzadeh argued that prose was as vital to a nation’s literature as poetry.1

By moving away from literary clichés and toward the portrayal of everyday life, Jamalzadeh inaugurated a new era that paved the way for later writers like Sadeq Hedayat.23