There's a Book for That: Iran
In light of nationwide protests in Iran that have drawn international attention over the past several weeks, we’ve curated a collection of important nonfiction on Iran and its history. These books help support thoughtful engagement with current events through a historical lens. Among them is KING OF KINGS by veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson, a vivid account of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that provides background for understanding the roots of the present moment.
KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER
From the author of the landmark bestseller Lawrence in Arabia comes a stunningly revelatory narrative history of the Iranian Revolution, one of the most momentous events in modern times. This groundbreaking work exposes the jaw-dropping stupidity of the American government and traces the rise of religious nationalism, offering essential insights into today’s global unrest.
“A masterful and propulsive account that chronicles a devastatingly transformative series of events whose aftereffects reverberate to this day.” —The Kirkus Prize 2025 Jury
An unflinching and stunning debut memoir of an Iranian girl’s coming-of-age experiencing abuse, war, and superstition—and her survival through dissociative identity disorder, which offered her an inner world into which she could escape.
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
In September 2022, a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jîna Amini, died after being beaten by police officers who arrested her for not adhering to the Islamic Republic’s dress code. Her death galvanized thousands of Iranians—mostly women—who took to the streets in one of the country’s largest uprisings in decades: the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. For the Sun after Long Nights is a moving exploration of the 2022 women-led protests in Iran, as told through the interwoven stories of two Iranian journalists.
A hugely ambitious, “delightfully readable, genuinely informative” portrait (The New York Times) of the two-centuries-long entwined histories of Iran and America—two powers who were once allies and now adversaries—by an admired historian and former journalist.
With more than a decade of experience reporting on, researching, and writing about Iran, Laura Secor narrates this unprecedented history as a story of individuals caught up in the slipstream of their time, seizing and wielding ideas powerful enough to shift its course as they wrestle with their country’s apparatus of violent repression as well as its rich and often tragic history. Essential reading at this moment when the fates of our countries have never been more entwined, Children of Paradise will stand as a classic of political reporting; an indelible portrait of a nation and its people striving for change.
Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi’s best-selling, internationally acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up as a girl in Iran during the revolution has for twenty years been a classroom staple, a feminist manifesto, and one of the most popular and widely known graphic novels of all time.
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY
Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice.
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