Iran’s nearly decade-long war with Iraq has spawned a plethora of literary and cinematic works. Starting in the first year of the war and continuing unabated until today, “the literature of Holy Defense” as it has become known in Iran, has sought to embody the official state-narrative of the war. These works of literature and film depict the official history of the war: an imposed and religiously sanctified fight between absolute good and evil. With stories that take place largely on the war-front, writers of this genre dutifully aestheticize the righteousness of the Iranian cause, the religiously-inspired heroism and martyrdom of the fighters, and the painful, but loyal support of mothers and widows on the home-front. Since the appearance of the first war stories in 1981, literary realism, with a heavy emphasis on the religious beliefs of the fighters, has dominated the realm of war fiction in Iran. State-sponsored newspapers, publishing houses and prizes have encouraged this, making what some critics have called “Islamic Realism” the form of Holy Defense literature par excellence, thus establishing firm links between ideology, aesthetics, form and genre that have remained highly influential until the current day. However, modernist Persian literature is not without its influence on war writing in Iran. Modernist and experimental writers such as Hushang Golshiri, Shahriar Mandanipour, Hossein Mortezaiyan Abkenar and have subtly challenged the state narrative of the war, not only through the content of their stories, but especially through the radical reformulation of the form of the war story, creating new discursive spaces for the discussion of the war in Iranian society. Moreover, with the implementation of modernist techniques, these writers have created ideologically alternative narratives of the war, fragmenting time and space, shining light on the unspoken aspects of the war, and casting doubt on the certainty of the official war narrative. Informed by the theoretical work of Hayden White and Terry Eagleton, and with special emphasis on Hossein Mortezaiyan Abkenar’s award winning novella, The Scorpion on the Steps of the Andishmak Railroad (Aqrab Ru-ye Pelleh-ha-ye Andishmak), this paper investigates the relationship between form, content and ideology in Iranian war fiction. I argue that the creation of successful counter-narrative of the Iran-Iraq War in contemporary Iranian fiction has relied on the use of alternative literary forms that draw heavily from the tradition of modernist Persian fiction, while avoiding contemporary ideological associations between literary realism and the war.