A glimpse of Iran, by books, films and music : NPR

Few People have had the chance to go to or discover Iran, an ethnically various nation of over 90 million folks which has been successfully shut off from america for the reason that Iranian revolution of 1979. Now, with a U.S. and Israeli-led warfare on Iran underway, the concepts, emotions and opinions of Iranians could really feel much less accessible. Nonetheless, some current books, movies and music made by artists and journalists in Iran and from the Iranian diaspora may help illuminate this historic tradition and its up to date politics.

These solutions are simply a place to begin, after all — with an emphasis on current works made by Iranians themselves, reasonably than by outsiders wanting in.

Books

For the Solar After Lengthy Nights: The Story of Iran’s Ladies-Led Rebellion, by Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy

There are fairly just a few wonderful titles that deconstruct the historical past of Iran from historic instances by the rule of the Pahlavi Dynasty to the Iranian Revolution. However there are far fewer books that assist us perceive the Iran of 2026 and the individuals who stay there now. One standout is the Nationwide Ebook Award-nominated For the Solar After Lengthy Nights: The Story of Iran’s Ladies-Led Rebellion by journalists Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy, which chronicles — nearly in actual time — the Lady, Life, Freedom motion that started in 2022, throughout which Jamalpour was working secretly as a journalist in Tehran. In 2024-25, Jamalpour (who’s now dwelling in exile within the U.S.) and I spent a 12 months collectively on the College of Michigan’s Knight-Wallace fellowship for journalists; her insights into up to date Iran are among the many finest.

Gold, by Rumi, translated by Haleh Liza Gafori

If People are accustomed to Persian poetry in any respect, it could be by well-liked “translations” of the Thirteenth-century Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi achieved by the late American poet Coleman Barks, who neither learn nor spoke the Persian language and indifferent the works of Molana (“our grasp”), as Iranians name him, of references to Islam. (As an alternative, Barks “interpreted” preexisting English translations.)

In 2022, Iranian-American poet, efficiency artist and singer Haleh Liza Gafori supplied the primary quantity of a corrective, within the type of contemporary Rumi translations which might be directly accessible, deeply contemplative and fast. A second quantity, Water, adopted final 12 months.

Martyr!: A Novel, by Kaveh Akbar

This 2024 debut novel by Kaveh Akbar, the poetry editor at The Nation, is an unflinching tour-de-force bursting with wit and perception into the issues of diaspora, the character of identification in a post-Conflict on Terror world and the inter-generational affect of the 1979 Revolution on Iranians. The protagonist, the Iran-born however American-raised Cyrus Shams, has struggled with dependancy, despair and insomnia his complete life, and is attempting his finest to make sense of a world on the “intersection of Iranian-ness and Midwestern-ness.” As with so many different of the titles right here, fiction and reality are woven collectively: the story facilities across the true story of the U.S. downing an Iranian passenger aircraft in 1988 throughout the Iran-Iraq warfare.

The Stationery Store: A Novel, by Marjan Kamali

Marjan Kamali’s 2019 love story is the wistful story of a younger girl named Roya and an idealistic activist named Bahman, who meet cute in a Tehran retailer within the Fifties, however whose deliberate marriage falls aside as a consequence of turmoil each familial and political, as Iran’s democratically elected authorities falls in a U.S.-British lead coup that ends with the set up of the Shah. Roya flees to the U.S. for a contemporary begin, however the two reunite in 2013, questioning: what if life had spun out in a distinct route?

Motion pictures

Coup 53

This 2019 documentary directed by Iranian movie maker Taghi Amirani and co-written by Walter Murch recounts Operation Ajax, through which the CIA and Britain’s MI6 engineered the removing of Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, and put in a pleasant ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in his place. (The Shah was ousted within the 1979 revolution.) As Recent Air critic John Powers famous in his evaluate, “What emerges first is the backstory of the coup, which like a lot within the fashionable Center East relies on oil. Shortly after the black gold was found in early twentieth century Iran, a British oil firm now referred to as BP locked up a sweetheart deal for its exploitation. Iran not solely obtained a mere 16% of the oil cash earlier than British taxes, however the books have been stored by the British — and the Iranians weren’t allowed to see them.”

Reducing By means of Rocks

Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni’s movie Reducing By means of Rocks is up for an Oscar this season after premiering on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. This inspiring documentary follows Sara Shahverdi — a divorced, childless motorcyclist — as she campaigns to develop into the primary girl elected to town council of her distant village, and who desires of educating ladies to journey and to finish little one marriage.

It Was Simply an Accident

The newest movie from acclaimed director Jafar Panahi — who has formally been banned from making movies in Iran — is 2025’s It Was Simply an Accident. Panahi, who has been jailed a number of instances for his work and was lately sentenced once more in absentia, has stated in interviews that his inspiration for this brutal – and shockingly humorous – thriller was folks he met whereas in jail: an auto mechanic named Vahid finds himself face-to-face with the person who he’s pretty sure was his torturer in jail, and finally assembles different victims to attempt to verify his suspicions. Recent Air critic Justin Chang known as It Was Simply an Accident “a blast of pure anti-authoritarian rage.”

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

This 2024 thriller — shot in secret by director Mohammad Rasoulof — facilities on a household whose father, Iman, is appointed as an investigating choose in Tehran. But it surely quickly turns into clear that his job has nothing to do with really investigating. Iman, his spouse, and two daughters come to suspect one another in our age of mass surveillance, as town streets under erupt into the real-life Lady, Life, Freedom protests.

Music

Kayhan Kalhor

One of many main ambassadors of Persian classical music has been the composer and kamancheh (an Iranian bowed-instrument) virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor. Though music, like poetry, has been central to Iranian tradition for hundreds of years, all types of music have been initially banned after the 1979 revolution. Since then, nevertheless, Iranian classical musicians have ridden many looping cycles of official condemnation, grudging tolerance, censorship and makes an attempt at co-option by the regime.

Regardless of these difficulties, Kalhor has constructed a thriving profession each inside Iran and overseas, together with profitable a Grammy Award as a part of the Silkroad Ensemble and incomes three nominations as a solo artist. Again in 2012, I invited him to our Tiny Desk to carry out solo. “Did not know I might have goosebumps for 12 minutes straight,” a YouTube commenter lately wrote; I could not put it any higher.

Saeid Shanbehzadeh

Amongst Iran’s 92 million folks, about 40% of come from varied ethnic minorities, together with Azeris, Kurds and Armenians amongst many others. Probably the most fascinating communities is the Afro-Iranians within the Iranian south, a lot of whose ancestors have been delivered to Iran as enslaved folks from east Africa. Multi-instrumentalist and dancer Saeid Shanbehzadeh, who traces his ancestry to Zanzibar, celebrates that heritage together with his band, and specializes within the Iranian bagpipe and percussion.

The underground metallic scene

Regardless of ongoing restrictions on music — together with the continued ban on feminine singers performing in mixed-gender public settings — Iran is residence to a thriving underground scene for metallic and punk. Although it is fictional, Farbod Ardebelli’s 2020 quick drama Forbidden to See Us Scream in Tehran — which was secretly filmed in Tehran, with the director giving directions remotely from the U.S. by way of WhatsApp — offers a taste of that real-life scene and the hazards these artists face.