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Items17
1
My Uncle Napoleon (2006)
Published
A boy falls for his cousin Layli in a Tehran compound where an extended family shares a garden and few secrets stay private. Choose this long comedy for the gap between the boy’s earnest first love and the elaborate plots his uncle sees everywhere. Translated from Persian by Dick Davis.
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Things We Left Unsaid (2012)
Published
In the oil city of Abadan, Clarice Ayvazian’s routines begin to look different to her when an Armenian family moves in across the street. Pick this novel for quiet humor and the small changes in a household that tell you what Clarice wants before she has said it aloud. Translated from Persian by Franklin D. Lewis.
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Censoring an Iranian Love Story (2009)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
Sara and Dara are trying to have a romance, and the novelist who invents them is trying to get it past a censor. Read for the marks that pressure leaves on the page. Crossed-out lines let you see the story the novelist is writing and the one that might reach readers. Translated from Persian by Sara Khalili.
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Zanān bidūn-i mardān (1998)
Published
In Women Without Men, five women take different paths to a garden outside Tehran. A housewife, a sex worker, and a schoolteacher arrive with very different expectations of what life there might offer. Choose this short, fablelike novel for the questions it opens about the kinds of freedom a household can make possible. Translated from Persian by Faridoun Farrokh.
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Missing Soluch (2007)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
After Soluch disappears, his wife Mergan is left to raise their children in a remote village. Choose this novel for the way her anger and loyalty coexist as changing village work and power relations narrow her choices. Translated from Persian by Kamran Rastegar.
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The Complete Persepolis (2023)
Published
Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir follows her from childhood in revolutionary Tehran through school in Vienna and back to Iran. The complete edition lets the two places change how you read each other. Choose it for the shifts between the child’s view of what adults say at home and the young woman’s decisions abroad. The collected translation from French includes work by Mattias Ripa, Blake Ferris, and Anjali Singh.
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Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)
7.0/10on Open Library
Published
A literature class moves into Azar Nafisi’s living room, where seven former students meet to read and talk. Read this memoir for the sense of what a room can make possible, and for the different ways its readers recognize themselves in books written far away.
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Savushun (1990)
Published
In wartime Shiraz, Zari hears politics discussed at home and tries to keep her family safe as the conflict comes closer. Choose Simin Daneshvar’s novel for the experience of history arriving in a house through visitors, meals, and overheard talk. This edition was translated from Persian by M. R. Ghanoonparvar.
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The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen (2025)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
A group of children gets lost in a palace, and this Zoroastrian family saga follows their lives across decades of Iranian history. Choose it for the scale and for the way folklore slips into the family’s own stories. The translator from Persian chose to remain anonymous.
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The Book of Fate (2013)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
Massoumeh’s life is already shaped by her family’s decisions when the Shah’s secret service comes for her husband. This is a long domestic saga to choose for the way her problems keep changing even as other people continue to decide what counts as duty. Translated from Persian by Sara Khalili.
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The Septembers of Shiraz (2007)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
After a Jewish jeweler is imprisoned in post-revolutionary Tehran, his wife searches for him while his children begin to imagine what leaving might mean. Choose this novel for the way it divides one crisis into several kinds of waiting, each felt by someone with a different amount of information and power.
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The Lion Women of Tehran (2025)
Published
Ellie meets Homa at school after her father’s death forces her and her mother to move downtown in 1950s Tehran. Their time together in Homa’s kitchen and in the Grand Bazaar makes this a good choice if you want the warmth and friction of friendship to carry a historical novel.
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The virgin of solitude (2008)
Published
Nuri likes being noticed on the streets of Tehran, though he misses his mother and feels out of place. The novel also follows his Austrian grandmother, who has made Iran her home. Choose it for the uneven way belonging comes to two people in the same family. Translated from Persian by Nasrin Rahimieh.
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Seasons of Purgatory (2022)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
In these short stories, the effects of war and repression show up in places where a person might expect to be left alone. Choose the collection when you want something darker and less straightforward than a family saga. Its unsettling turns make a good pair with the visible interruptions of Censoring an Iranian Love Story. Translated from Persian by Sara Khalili.
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Rain-Soaked Persian New Year (2026)
Published
In Zohreh Hakimi’s short stories, ordinary life carries memories across borders. The settings take you from Tehran to the American Southwest, giving the collection a different sense of distance from the books here set wholly in Iran. Pick it if you want migration told through daily life and its small turns of humor. Translated from Persian by M. R. Ghanoonparvar.
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Sin (2007)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Forugh Farrokhzad’s selected poems put desire and loneliness into a voice direct enough to feel like a confidence. Try the title poem alongside later work collected here from Reborn to hear how that voice changes. Translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé.
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The Ayatollah begs to differ (2009)
Published
Hooman Majd’s reporting moves among government officials, women who drive cabs, and clerics with different views of reform. Choose this for scenes and conversations that give public labels less room to tell you who someone is. Read it as a portrait of the period Majd was reporting on.
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