Books from Iran
44 popular iranian books
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
The target of the Read Around The World Challenge is to read at least one book written by an author from each and every country in the world.
All books that are listed here as part of the "Read Around Asia Challenge" were written by authors from Iran.
Find a great book for the next part of your reading journey around the world from this book list. The following popular books have been recommended so far.
31.
Persepolis 2 : The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi EN
Description:
The fascinating continuation of the best-selling Persepolis, “one of the freshest and most original memoirs of our day” (Los Angeles Times). Marjane Satrapi dazzles with her heartrending graphic memoir about growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In 1984, Marjane flees fundamentalism and the war with Iraq to begin a new life in Vienna. Once there, she faces the trials of adolescence far from her friends and family, and while she soon carves out a place for herself among a group of fellow outsiders, she continues to struggle for a sense of belonging. Finding that she misses her home ... continue
32.
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi EN
Description:
When a radical Islamist in Nafisi's English class at Tehran University questions her decision to teach 'The Great Gatsby', she decides to let him put Gatsby on trial. When she is fired for refusing to wear a veil, she resumes her classes at home with a small group of female students.
33.
Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji EN
Description:
From "a striking new talent"(Sandra Dallas, author of Tallgrass) comes an unforgettable debut novel of young love and coming of age in an Iran headed toward revolution. In this poignant, eye-opening and emotionally vivid novel, Mahbod Seraji lays bare the beauty and brutality of the centuries-old Persian culture, while reaffirming the human experiences we all share. In a middle-class neighborhood of Iran's sprawling capital city, 17-year-old Pasha Shahed spends the summer of 1973 on his rooftop with his best friend Ahmed, joking around one minute and asking burning questions about life the nex... continue
34.
Saddlebag : A Fable for Doubters and Seekers by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani EN
Description:
A beautifully told, transcendent tale of truth, salvation, and the power of desire.
36.
The Blind Owl by Ṣādiq Hidāyat EN
Description:
"A haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation. Replete with potent symbolism and terrifying surrealistic imagery, Sadegh Hedayat's masterpiece details a young man's despair after losing a mysterious lover ... [as he] gradually drifts into frenzy and madness."--Back cover
37.
The Complete Persepolis : Volumes 1 and 2 by Marjane Satrapi EN
Description:
A MEMOIR OF GROWING UP AS A GIL IN REVOLUTIONARY IRAN, PERSEPOLISE PRIVIDES A UNIQUEGLIMPLSE INTO A NEARLY UNKNOWN AND UNREACHABLE WAY OF LIFE.
38.
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar EN
Description:
An extraordinarily powerful and evocative literary novel set in Iran in the period immediately after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Using the lyrical magic realism style of classical Persian storytelling, Azar draws the reader deep into the heart of a family caught in the maelstrom of post-revolutionary chaos and brutality that sweeps across an ancient land and its people. The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is really an embodiment of Iranian life in constant oscillation, struggle, and play between four opposing poles: life and death; politics and religion. The sorrow residing in the dept... continue
39.
The Girl from the Garden by Parnaz Foroutan EN
Description:
An extraordinary new writer makes her literary debut with this suspenseful novel of desire, obsession, power and vulnerability, in which a crisis of inheritance leads to the downfall of a wealthy family of Persian Jews in early twentieth-century Iran. For all his wealth and success, Asher Malacouti—the head of a prosperous Jewish family living in the Iranian town of Kermanshah—cannot have the one thing he desires above all: a male son. His young wife Rakhel, trapped in an oppressive marriage at a time when a woman’s worth is measured by her fertility, is made desperate by her failure to concei... continue
40.
The Other Side of Silence : A Memoir of Exile, Iran, and the Global Women's Movement by Mahnaz Afkhami EN
Description:
When Mahnaz Afkhami picked up the phone in a New York hotel room early one morning in November 1978, she learned she could never go home again: she had been declared an apostate and enemy of the Iranian Revolution and was now on its death list. Afkhami, Iran's first minister for women's affairs, began to rebuild her life in the United States, becoming an architect of the women's movement in the Global South. Along the way, she encountered familial, cultural, political, and organizational hurdles that threatened to derail her quest to empower women and change the very structure of human relatio... continue