Tehran At Twilight

An Iranian American returns home to help a friend and finds his life in danger: “Remarkable . . . a smart, eloquent novel.” —Dalia Sofer, author of The Septembers of Shiraz The year is 2008. Reza Malek’s life is modest but manageable—he lives in a small apartment in Harlem, teaches at a local university, and is relieved to be far from the blood and turmoil of Iraq and Afghanistan, where he worked as a reporter, interpreter, and sometimes lover for a superstar journalist who has long since moved on to more remarkable men. But after a terse phone call from his best friend in Iran, Reza reluctantly returns to Tehran. Once there, he finds far more than he bargained for: the city is on the edge of revolution; his friend is embroiled with Shia militants; and his missing mother, who was alleged to have run off before the revolution, is alive and well—while his own life is now in danger. Against a backdrop of corrupt clerics, shady fixers, political repression, and the ever-present threat of violence, this novel offers a telling glimpse into contemporary Tehran, and spins a riveting morality tale of identity and exile, the bonds of friendship, and the limits of loyalty. “[A] swift, hard-boiled novel . . . Shadowy zealots exist everywhere, whether in conference rooms or interrogation rooms or—most often—in rooms that can serve as both.” —TheNew York Times Book Review “A gripping portrait of a nation awash in violence and crippled by corruption.” —Publishers Weekly “A smart political thriller.” —Laila Lalami, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of The Moor’s Account “Gives readers a visceral sense of life in a country where repression is the norm . . . Recommended for espionage aficionados and for readers who enjoy international settings.” —Library Journal “A fascinating glimpse of contemporary Iran through the familiar story of childhood friends whose paths are beginning to diverge irreversibly.” —Shelf Awareness

Informed by firsthand experience on the battlefronts of Iraq and Syria, Abdoh captures the horror, confusion, and absurdity of combat from a seldom-glimpsed perspective that expands our understanding of the war novel. "Abdoh's powerful novel follows an Iranian war reporter who is torn between his wearying job on the front lines and a civilian existence that he finds increasingly alienating. The book is as much a reflection on memory and art as it is a war story, and Abdoh's writing captures beautifully the absurdity of both the battlefield and modern life." —New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice Saleh, the narrator of Out of Mesopotamia, is a middle-aged Iranian journalist who moonlights as a writer for one of Iran's most popular TV shows but cannot keep himself away from the front lines in neighboring Iraq and Syria. There, the fight against the Islamic State is a proxy war, an existential battle, a declaration of faith, and, for some, a passing weekend affair. After weeks spent dodging RPGs, witnessing acts of savagery and stupidity, Saleh returns to civilian life in Tehran but finds it to be an unbearably dislocating experience. Pursued by his official handler from state security, opportunistic colleagues, and the woman who broke his heart, Saleh has reason to again flee from everyday life. Surrounded by men whose willingness to achieve martyrdom both fascinates and appalls him, Saleh struggles to make sense of himself and the turmoil in his midst. An unprecedented glimpse into "endless war" from a Middle Eastern perspective, Out of Mesopotamia follows in the tradition of the Western canon of martial writers—from Hemingway and Orwell to Tim O'Brien and Philip Caputo—but then subverts and expands upon the genre before completely blowing it apart. Drawing from his firsthand experience of being embedded with Shia militias on the ground in Iraq and Syria, Abdoh gives agency to the voiceless while offering a meditation on war that is moving, humane, darkly funny, and resonantly true

A sweeping, propulsive novel about the families we are born into and the families we make for ourselves, in which a man struggles to find his place in an Iran on the brink of combusting Amid the alleyways of the Zamzam neighborhood of Tehran, a woman lights herself on fire in a desperate act of defiance, setting off a chain reaction of violence and protest. Haunted by the woman’s death, Issa is forced to confront the contradictions of his own family history, throughout which his late brother Hashem, a prominent queer artist in Tehran’s underground, had defied their father, a skilled martial artist bound to traditional notions of honor and masculinity. Issa soon finds himself thrown into a circle of people living on the margins of society, negotiating a razor-like code of conduct that rewards loyalty and encourages aggression and intolerance in equal measure. As the city explodes around him, Issa realizes that it is the little acts of kindness that matter most, the everyday humanity of individuals finding love and doing right by one another. Vibrant and evocative, intimate and intelligent, A Nearby Country Called Love is both a captivating window into contemporary Iran and a portrait of the parallel fates of a man and his country—a man who acknowledges the sullen and rumbling baggage of history but then chooses to step past its violent inheritance.

An unflinching noir exploration of one of the world's most volatile cities.

Seen and Unseen explores how visual mediums construct visual cultures that create limited perspectives of issues and groups, specific to this volume, the representation of Islam and Muslims. It deals with fixed and stereotypical visual representations and explores alternative and challenging representations that are reconstructing existing belief systems.

A city of stories – short, fragmented, amorphous, and at times contradictory – Tehran is an impossible tale to tell. For the capital city of one of the most powerful nations in the Middle East, its literary output is rarely acknowledged in the West. This unique celebration of its writing brings together ten stories exploring the tensions and pressures that make the city what it is: tensions between the public and the private, pressures from without – judgemental neighbours, the expectations of religion and society – and from within – family feuds, thwarted ambitions, destructive relationships. The psychological impact of these pressures manifests in different ways: a man wakes up to find a stranger relaxing in his living room and starts to wonder if this is his house at all; a struggling writer decides only when his girlfriend breaks his heart will his work have depth... In all cases, coping with these pressures leads us, the readers, into an unexpected trove of cultural treasures – like the burglar, in one story, descending into the basement of a mysterious antique collector’s house – treasures of which we, in the West, are almost wholly ignorant. Translated by: Sara Khalili, Sholeh Wolpé, Alireza Abiz, Caroline Croskery, Farzaneh Doosti, Shahab Vaezzadeh, Niloufar Talebi, Lida Nosrati, Susan Niazi and Poupeh Missaghi. Foreword by Orkideh Behrouzan. Developed in partnership with Visiting Arts. 'The aesthetic sensibility of Iranian culture appears, to the West, as mainly pre-modern, if not actually anti-modern... The fiction showcased in The Book of Tehran is a welcome corrective to this tendency... These stories feel decidedly contemporary in style and subject matter alike, with their protagonists' inner lives and interpersonal relationships at the fore.' - The Times Literary Supplement 'Fiction exploring the interior life of contemporary Iranians is not well represented in translations readily available in the West. The Book of Tehran aims to begin to redress the shortage...' - Asian Review of Books

The Iranian revolution of 1979 launched a vast, global diaspora, with many Iranians establishing new lives in the United States. In the four decades since, the diaspora has expanded to include not only those who emigrated immediately after the revolution but also their American-born children, more recent immigrants, and people who married into Iranian families, all of whom carry their own stories of trauma, triumph, adversity, and belonging that reflect varied and nuanced perspectives on what it means to be Iranian or Iranian American. The essays in My Shadow Is My Skin are these stories. This collection brings together thirty-two authors, both established and emerging, whose writing captures the diversity of diasporic experiences. Reflecting on the Iranian American experience over the past forty years and shedding new light on themes of identity, duality, and alienation in twenty-first-century America, the authors present personal narratives of immigration, sexuality, marginalization, marriage, and religion that offer an antidote to the news media’s often superficial portrayals of Iran and the people who have a connection to it. My Shadow Is My Skin pulls back the curtain on a community that rarely gets to tell its own story.

Mahsa Jina Amini's death at the hands of Iran's Morality Police on 16 September 2022 sparked widespread protests across the country. Women took to the streets, uncovering their hair, burning headscarves and chanting 'Woman, Life, Freedom' – 'Zan Zendegi Azadi' in Persian and 'Jin Jîyan Azadî' in Kurdish – in mass demonstrations. An explosion of creative resistance followed as art and photography shared online went viral and people around the world saw what was really going on in Iran. Woman Life Freedom captures this historic moment in artwork and first-person accounts. This striking collection goes behind-the-scenes at forbidden fashion shows; registers the sound of dissent in Iran, where it has been illegal for women to sing unaccompanied in public since 1979; and walks the streets of Tehran with 'The Smarties' – Gen Z women who colour and show their hair in defiance of the authorities, despite the potentially devastating consequences. Extolling the power of art, writing and body politics – both female and queer – this collection is both a universal rallying call and a celebration of the women the regime has tried and failed to silence. This is what protest looks like.