Book 100 - MAR 29, 2025 - SAT
LETTERS TO MY TORTURER: LOVE, REVOLUTION, AND IMPRISONMENT IN IRAN
In letters to "Brother Hamid", who tortured him, Houshang Asadi delivers an account of his imprisonment in 1981 on charges of being a spy, finding himself trapped in the machinery of Iran’s security apparatus. He narrates his psychological and physical torment during his six years in Tehran’s Evin Prison.
Beyond the pain, this book is an exploration of survival, resilience, and the haunting complexities of human relationships, between captor and captive. Here he confronts his torturer, speaking for those who will never be heard, and provides a glimpse into the heart of the practice of state-sponsored justice.
Book 92 - MAR 20, 2025 - THU
WOMEN WITHOUT MEN: A NOVEL OF MODERN IRAN
Published in 1989, it´s about five women, including a wealthy middle-aged housewife, a prostitute, and a schoolteacher, as they arrive by different paths to live in a mystical orchard on the outskirts of Tehran.
Each woman’s story is marked by suffering - whether from forced marriage, sexual violence, or societal constraints - yet they each find a way to freedom, culminating in their retreat together, where they attempt to build a new life away from the confines of family and society, in a world without men.
Shortly after its publication, Shahrnush Parsipur was arrested, and the novel banned in Iran due to its feminist tone and open discussion of sexuality. But this national bestseller was eventually translated to several languages, gained international recognition, and was adapted into an acclaimed 2009 film.
Book 84 - MAR 12, 2025 - WED
READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN: A MEMOIR IN BOOKS
by Azar Nafisi
For two years (1995-97), Azar Nafisi met seven young women weekly to read forbidden Western novels. They were Nafisi´s former university students, some from religious families, others from secular backgrounds, and several had spent time in jail.
Shy and uncomfortable at first, unused to speak their minds, soon they began to open up not only about the novels but also themselves. They found parallels between the books they read - Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller, and Lolita - and their reality under the Iranian regime.
In this memoir, Nafisi also portrays her teaching Western literature in the 1980s in a post-revolutionary Iran undergoing radical change and amid the Iran-Iraq war. Her use of classics to illuminate themes of tyranny, ideology, repression, and personal autonomy is a tribute to the power of literature to inspire and liberate.
Book 76 - MAR 04, 2025 - tue
SHAHNAMEH: THE PERSIAN BOOK OF KINGS
The Shahnameh or The Book of Kings is an epic poem written by Ferdowsi between 977 and 1010. It´s about the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire, from the creation of the world until the Arab conquest in the 7th century.
It has been of central importance in Persian language and the ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. Much like ancient Greek literature, this poem tells the mythical tales of Iran’s history and creation through tragic love stories, wars, villains and heroes, being deeply embedded in the Persian imaginary.
Dick Davis´s translation is an elegant combination of prose and verse, interspersed with explanations to ease along modern readers, so the Shahnameh can be experienced in the same way that Iranian storytellers have lovingly conveyed it over the centuries.
Book 68 - FEB 24, 2025 - MON
It´s 1996 in New York. Mina, born in Iran but raised in the US, is caught between her parent´s Iranian expectations for her life and her American values. Darya tries to find Iranian prospective husbands for her daughter, despite Mina’s reluctance.
Frustrated by the cultural gap between them, Darya decides to take Mina on a trip to Iran, a place Mina barely remembers but one that is part of her identity. In a journey of self-discovery, Mina experiences the vibrancy of Tehran and meets a young man who never appeared on her mother´s matchmaking radar. For Darya, returning to Iran evokes the life she left behind, including the pain of revolution and exile, but at the same time she´s tempted by an American musician.
Kamali’s debut novel captures the sacrifices of immigrants and the enduring pull of home. It immerses readers in Persian culture, food, sights, and traditions. And it explores a mother-daughter relationship torn between their ethnic roots and current aspirations.
Book 60 - FEB 16, 2025 - Sun
SAVUSHUN: A NOVEL ABOUT MODERN IRAN
Published in 1969, it´s the first major Persian novel written by a woman. Set in Shiraz during the Allied occupation of Iran in WW II, it follows Zari´s family amid the political turmoil of that time.
Zari is a young wife and mother who has to cope with her uncompromising husband, Yusof, as she´s torn between her desire for traditional family life and her need for individual identity. Yusof, a principled landowner, refuses to sell food to the British military while famine devastates the country leading to tragic consequences.
From Zari´s perspective, Savushun is a narrative about oppression, resistance, and struggle for autonomy, both national and personal. Although written prior to the Islamic Revolution, it has been considered by many as the best single work for understanding modern Iran. Savushun is an ancient Persian tradition that conjures hope in spite of everything.
Book 52 - FEB 08, 2025 - SAT
Published in 1937, this classic of modern Iranian literature is narrated by an opium-addicted painter who, after losing a mysterious lover, addresses morbid confessions to a shadow on the wall that looks like an owl.
It´s a novel written in a fragmented style, exploring themes of existential despair, madness, and death. The narrator, tormented by hallucinations and isolation, recounts his obsession with an ethereal woman who seems to embody both beauty and doom.
Introspective and unsettling, The Blind Owl reveals how fragile is the human sense of reality. Hedayat´s prose, infused with Persian symbolism, Eastern philosophy and Western existentialist thought, continues to inspire new generations of writers in Iran.
Book 44 - Jan 31, 2025 - FRI
Embroidery is the art of decorating cloth with stitches sewn onto the material. But it also means overdramatization in the description of an event.
Embroideries is a graphic novel about a group of Iranian women coming together over tea. As the afternoon progresses, naturally the subject turns to men, love, and sex. They start sharing secrets and stories about, among other things, how to fake virginity, escape an arranged marriage, enjoy the miracles of plastic surgery, and delight in being a mistress.
Satrapi offers an intimate and humorous glimpse into the lives of women whose stories will strike us at once as familiar and different, bringing smiles of recognition to the faces of women
everywhere and teaching us all a thing or two.
Book 36 - Jan 23, 2025 - THU
Perhaps the most important work in modern Iranian literature, this novel examines the life of an impoverished woman and her children in a rural village in Iran in the 1960s, after the disappearance of her husband, Soluch.
She struggles to survive amid authoritarism, political corruption, violence, and poverty. She also vacillates between love for Soluch and anger at his absence and toils to make ends meet and raise her three children without their father.
Missing Soluch was the first novel written in the everyday language of the Iranian people and revolutionized Persian literature. Mahmoud Dowlatabadi composed this novel while in jail, arrested by the Shah's secret police force in 1974 and released two years later.
Book 28 - Jan 15, 2025 - WED
by Zoya Pirzad
How many of us keep things in our head and unsaid? Clarice Ayvazian is like that. Published in 2001, this novel is set in the years that led to the Islamic Revolution and crafts an intimate portrait of Clarice´s family life from her point of view.
In an Iranian suburb, made rich by the booming oil industry, she lives a comfortable life surrounded by her children and her gossiping friends and relatives. She devotes herself to their every need, from dusting the house multiple times a day, which is a virtue of a perfect woman according to her mother, to making snacks for the kids, while having limited conversation with her husband as he reads the daily newspaper.
Clarice is apparently satisfied. Until an enigmatic Armenian family moves in across the street, and the orderly and monotonous life of Clarice is changed forever.