The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran: SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2026
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026, Shida Bazyar's novel follows one Iranian family across four decades, tracing how history reshapes ordinary lives in ways that are both intimate and devastating. It's a multi-voiced story, told through shifting perspectives that span continents and generations. In 1979, a young communist named Behzad throws himself into the revolutionary fervour following the Shah's fall, finding political purpose and, unexpectedly, love, in the form of the sharp and spirited Nahid. A decade later, the two of them are living in West Germany, gathered around a radio with their small children, straining to hear word of friends who vanished when the mullahs consolidated their grip on power. By 1999, their daughter Laleh is travelling back to Iran with her mother, navigating a Tehran that feels at once familiar and foreign, its beauty rituals and buried family histories sitting uneasily alongside her hazy childhood impressions. Then comes 2009, when Laleh's brother Mo is preoccupied with a friend's romantic troubles until the Green Revolution erupts in Iran, pulling his attention, and his sense of self, in an entirely new direction. Bazyar moves between these voices with real control, letting the personal and the political press against each other rather than spelling out the connection. The result is a novel about longing, resistance, and what it costs a family to carry history through time.
- Author: Shida Bazyar
- Publisher: Scribe Publications
- Genre: Mythology & Folklore
- ISBN: 978-1917189095
- Pages: 272 pages