Honoring the Sofreh Tradition: An Interview with Maryam Khosrowshahi
For centuries, Iranians have celebrated important occasions such as weddings and the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, with a unique tradition known as sofreh (Persian for 'spread.') Exquisite textiles are covered with flowers, fruits,...
Iran’s Clerics Will Be ‘Finished’ After Khamenei, Says Author Arash Azizi
By Ahmad Rafat
"What Iranians Want" – by the Iranian-born author and academic Arash Azizi -- is one of the first books to be published on the protest movement sparked by the September 2022 killing...
Iran’s Government Closes Children’s Libraries to Cut Costs
By Kayhan Life Staff
The Iranian government recently announced its plan to close some 1,000 libraries belonging to the Institute for the Development of Children and Young Adults, also known as the Center for the...
Abbas Amanat’s Engaging History of Iran: Book Review
By Ariane Moshiri
Abbas Amanat's "Iran: A Modern History" is the culmination of decades of patient and careful scholarship. For those who may be intimidated by the 1,000-page opus, Amanat writes in engaging prose, and offers...
Iranian-Born Journalist Farah Nayeri Releases Book on Art and Censorship
By Natasha Phillips
Artists are regularly monitored and censored nowadays in places such as the Middle East and Asia. According to a new book by Farah Nayeri, they face complicated challenges in the West, too.
In...
Abbas Amanat’s ’Iran‘: The Challenges of History with an Attitude
By Amir Taheri
Throughout the history of writing history, that is to say since Herodotus put pen to paper, Iran has always attracted and at the same time repelled those who, for a variety of...
German-Iranian Author Nava Ebrahimi Discusses Her First Novel
By Behjat Omid
A wave of titles by second-generation German-Iranian authors is making its way into German bookstores.
Critically acclaimed releases include Nava Ebrahimi’s "Sechzehn Worter" ("Sixteen Words"), Shida Bazyar’s "Nachts ist es Leise in Tehran"...
Trading Shahnameh for De Kooning: New Memoir Recounts Historic 1994 ‘Exchange’
By Nazanine Nouri
A new memoir by the late British art dealer Oliver Hoare tells the story of how, 30 years ago, he engineered a clandestine swap between a priceless 16th-century manuscript of the Shahnameh,...
How Central Asia Has Had a “Raw Deal” for 200 Years
When people think of Central Asia, they usually associate the region much more with the former Soviet Union than with Asia or even the Middle East – and sometimes even less so with Islam....
‘Superabundantly Talented’ Author Ottessa Moshfegh Releases New Book
By Nazanine Nouri
Ottessa Moshfegh is an award-winning American author and novelist of Iranian descent who has published four books to great critical acclaim since 2014. Her latest -- "Death in Her Hands," described as...
