In recent years, Iran has gained attention mostly for negative reasons - for its authoritarian religious government, disputed nuclear programme, and controversial role in the Middle East - but there is much more to the story of this ancient land than can be gleaned from the news. This authoritative [...]
This book offers a view of Iran through politics, history and literature, showing how the three angles combine. Iran, being a revolutionary society, experienced two great revolutions within the short span of just seventy years, from the 1900s to the 1970s. Both were massive revolts of the society ag[...]
As the Western-Iranian impasse continues to dominate international affairs, politicians and the media confidently proclaim Iran the greatest threat to the Western World. But this villainous mask obscures a far more complex identity formed by a vibrant and tumultuous history. Revealing the true face [...]
Homa Katouzian offers a groundbreaking theoretical framework for the study of Modern Iranian history. In the model, he proposes, Katouzian identifies a cycle of arbitrary rule leading to chaos, resulting in a further period of arbitrary rule, degenerating once more into chaos, and so on. The ebb and[...]
Sadeq Hedayat is the most famous and the most enigmatic Iranian writer of the 20th century. He was born in 1903 and he lived a troubled life which ended in 1951 with his suicide in Paris. His most celebrated novel, "The Blind Owl" has made an impact far beyond Iranian literary circles and has drawn [...]